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(+2134) Stop the linkjacking! The Las Vegas Slots vs. Voting Machines graphic is good enough that its creators deserve credit. Here's the orginal, with a link to the book it's based on (in comments).

(+2134) Stop the linkjacking! The Las Vegas Slots vs. Voting Machines graphic is good enough that its creators deserve credit. Here's the orginal, with a link to the book it's based on (in comments). submitted by l_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_l to eddit10yearsago [link] [comments]

"Stop the linkjacking! The Las Vegas Slots vs. Voting Machines graphic is good enough that its creators deserve credit. Here's the orginal, with a link to the book it's based on (in comments). " - /r/politics (+2134) [October 12, 2010]

submitted by l_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_l to eddit9yearsago [link] [comments]

Stop the linkjacking! The Las Vegas Slots vs. Voting Machines graphic is good enough that its creators deserve credit. Here's the orginal, with a link to the book it's based on (in comments).

Stop the linkjacking! The Las Vegas Slots vs. Voting Machines graphic is good enough that its creators deserve credit. Here's the orginal, with a link to the book it's based on (in comments). submitted by AngelaMotorman to politics [link] [comments]

Stop the linkjacking! The Las Vegas Slots vs. Voting Machines graphic is good enough that its creators deserve credit. Here's the orginal, with a link to the book it's based on [in comments].

Stop the linkjacking! The Las Vegas Slots vs. Voting Machines graphic is good enough that its creators deserve credit. Here's the orginal, with a link to the book it's based on [in comments]. submitted by AngelaMotorman to pics [link] [comments]

Why I'll never stop buying GME, and why you probably should

When I turned 18, there was a casino about 2 hours away on a reservation that I could get into. We'd get paid on Friday night, head to the gas station near us that would cash a paycheck, pile into my crappy little Ford, then make the drive. We'd get there a little before midnight and everyone had their own game.
The second time we went, one of my friends was hypnotized by the craps table. There were 16 players standing around this sea of green, and every minute or so, you could hear them screaming at the top of their lungs like they just won a million dollars. On the way home that night, I taught him everything I learned from books I'd read about the different bets. "Smart" bets where the house edge was only 1.4%, all the way down to the risky ones where the house edge was over 10% (meaning that for every $100 wagered, you should expect to lose $10).
The next time we went, we hung around the table, trying to figure out the right way to bet. It seemed a little complicated, so we tried other games. At the end of the night, I had the last $10 and he asked if he could borrow it to go place a bet. I handed it over, then went to the bathroom in preparation for the ride home. When I finally found him again, he had a stack of chips in front of him. He had been gone for about 5 minutes and already turned $10 into a few hundred. Well, if you can turn 10 into 100, you can turn 100 into 1,000 just as easily. We left empty handed that night, but I'll never forget the rush.
I loved blackjack. I learned how to play at an early age from my uncle, who would always cheat and take my money. He'd say "I just taught you a very valuable lesson." He actually taught me two: 1) if you play against a casino, you may have a good night and win thousands of dollars, but if you keep going back, you'll eventually have nothing left. 2) My uncle was a scumbag who continually cheated and took my money, then told the family I was a poor sport and they couldn't understand why I hated doing anything with him. One of my earliest memories at the casino was running $100 at the blackjack table into $3000, which is more than I made in a month of bussing tables. I went home, paid my rent and blew the rest on useless things I can't even remember.
What does any of this have to do with $GME? Well I'm still chasing the same high as I was when I was 18. I don't go to the casino anymore, but I've got something even better on my computer. I bought $2k worth of weeklies on Jan 25. Before everything crashed, they were worth over $100k, more than enough to fix most of the problems I've caused in my life. BUT, I was still standing around that craps table. The roller had just made his 30th point in a row, $GME was on fire and couldn't possibly roll a 7! I put my 2k back in my pocket and shoved the rest on the pass line. A few minutes later, the croupier inevitably yells "7 out!" and just like that, I'm back to nothing.
Now I do what every moron around the table does. You reach back into your pocket, pull out the 2k and make a deal with your maker. "Just let it happen one more time. I won't be greedy THIS time and I'll stop when I hit 50k." I stop looking at the smart bets and start eyeing the center of the table, where hard ways are paying 10:1. Yeah, that'll be how I get back to 50k. A couple of those in a row and I can put a down payment on a house. 5 minutes later, I'm on my way out to the car and I feel like I've been punched in the gut. Again.
Every one of you in this subreddit is another person sitting at the casino. Everyone has their game. The people holding $GME stonks right now? You're playing baccarat. If you've never heard of it, it's what James Bond plays in the old movies. It's about the most boring thing you can do. Two hands are dealt and you're betting on which one wins before anything happens. There's no actual skill and it's the same thing as betting heads or tails, while losing 1% of your bet every time.
The people who cashed out and picked something else like $AMC or $BB? Those are the slot players. You had a big hit and now you're going to switch machines because the other ones are "due". You're looking for the exact same magic, thinking there was something smart in your play, when it was really just dumb luck in timing.
The people saying "If Daddy Elon or Cowboy Cuban gets in, we can trigger a squeeze!" You're the guy who spent too much money in the first 20 minutes of the trip and now you're begging everyone else for a loan.
Tldr: Nothing is happening with $GME. Stop saying "tomorrow is the day." Billionaires are not coming to bail you out. If institutional investors come in, they're waiting for this constant downhill slide to end at where the stock belongs, probably around $20. You can't trigger shit by holding. The HFs will outlast you.
Edit: Screenshots from the worst 40 minutes of my financial life https://imgur.com/a/MlTRJmx
Edit 2: JFC, some of you are takin WSB way too seriously. You should not be using reddit for DD. Also, this is not financial advice. Don't take financial advice from someone who tells you stories about chasing highs at casinos.
Edit 3: This is WSB, my dudes. I'm glad most of you were entertained by my story. For the few of you who got that worked up by a random stranger on the internet telling you that he's a degenerate, you may actually have a problem. https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/
submitted by mt4h to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

I present what I believe to be the fastest 5e build as of today: the Intercontinental Ballistic Tabaxi (ICBT)

UPDATED, check changelog at the bottom!

Strap into your crash couches and take your anti-inertials, folks. You are going to need them.
What if I said you could fly over 34,000 feet in a turn, fully RAW with published content? You start with a Tabaxi with a base movement of 30 feet. And it all goes downhill from there.

Classes:

5 Totem Barbarian for +10 feet from Fast Movement. In addition, take Elk Totem for your level 3 pick.
10 Monk for another +20 feet from Unarmored Movement.
2 Bladesinger gives +10 feet while Bladesinging.
2 Fighter doesn't allow any extra movement, but grants Action Surge.
This leaves you with 1 level of your choice. In addition, the Monk subclass is up to you.
So far we’re at 70 feet walking speed. This is fast for your average end-level monk, but we’ve yet to mainline the real speed.
And before we get any further, you will actually need friends for this. You might lose them with these shenanigans, but the classes they’ll need are:
Transmutation Wizard 17/Alchemist Artificer 3; they will need a Boon of Spell Recall and the Metamagic Adept Feat with Extended Spell.
Oath of Glory Paladin 7/Creation Bard 6/Graviurgist Wizard 2. The rest of their levels are up to you.

Other Speed Bonuses:

Let’s get the weird thing out of the gate. Your Transmuter should have Shapechange prepared, but not as a scroll as you won’t be the one casting it. Instead, the Transmuter is going to cast Glyph of Warding at 9th level, casting an Extended Shapechange by using their aforementioned Boon of Spell Recall and Metamagic Adept to circumvent the need for two 9th level spell slots. You then activate this glyph to become a Quickling. This replaces your 30 base speed with 120 feet, so it evens out to a +90. In addition, you do not have to concentrate on this spell thanks to Glyph of Warding, which means...
...You can maintain Shapechange while Raging for +15 feet under Elk Totem.
Attune to the Book of Exalted Deeds. This artifact can have 2 Major Beneficial Properties from the random properties list in the DMG, [41-50] is a +10 to walk speed. This means rolling the same bonus twice will grant you +20 feet.
The same goes for The Infernal Machine of Lum the Mad; except it has 5 random effects. Rolling a [48] five times can grant up to a +50 to walking speed. This same effect doubles your lung capacity each time, which means you can hold your breath 32x as long.
Grab the Mobile feat for +10.
Be gifted a Transmuter Stone with the speed buff from your Transmuter for +10.
Epic Boon of Speed grants another +30 feet.
Voluntarily have a Sibriex Warp you using the Flesh Warping variant rule. Since Shapechange was cast with the Extended Metamagic, this means it will still be active when the Warping finishes with slightly under an hour left. A result of [56-60] on the Flesh Warping table grants a +10 to walk speed.
Cast or have Longstrider cast on you for +10.
The Paladin should use their Graviurgist multiclass’ Adjust Density on you, for yet another +10
Have your Transmuter use their Alchemist Experimental Elixir feature to give you a Swiftness Elixir for +10 feet.
Start your turn within range of the Paladin’s Aura Of Alacrity for another +10.
Also start your turn within 10ft of a Dancing Item created by the Paladin's Animating Performance for +10 feet.
70 + 285 = 355 feet of walk speed. But this is all simple addition, even 1st graders are learning their multiplication.

Multipliers:

Use your last attunement for Boots of Speed: x2
Have Haste cast on you by your friendly Transmuter, or drink a Potion of Speed: x2
Shapechange allows use of your features if you have the proper anatomy, so Feline Agility is fair game: x2
Multipliers stack, so 2 x 2 x 2 grants you a x8.
355 x 8 is 2,840 feet per movement.

Now the actions, lets count them out:

Have your Paladin use their Bard multiclass to use a readied Dissonant Whispers set to trigger once you start to move (remaining in range for the spell to target you) using Feline Agility: Reaction Move x1
Base movement x2
Action Dash x3
Hasted Dash x4
Action Surge Dash x5
Step of the Wind Dash x6
2,840 x 6 is a total of 17,040 feet in a round.

But did you think we were done yet?

Finally, there's an item in The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (in Tales From the Yawning Portal) called the Eagle Whistle. When you blow it continually, you can fly at a rate of twice your movement speed. There’s no stated action to blow the whistle, only a limit of how long you can use it continuously.

This gives us a final total of 17,040 x 2 for 34,080 feet in one turn. Flying. This is analogous to Mach 5.05.

• • •

Afterword:

Why, why would I do this? Well, mostly because I could, and because nobody stopped me the last few times I shared older builds. Also, it’s because I’ve seen a good number of builds recently that try to take the crown of ‘fastest 5e build’, and each time I’m disappointed to find some misinterpretation of a feature, or using a UA that’s no longer in the playtesting phase and is now unsupported (coughMysticcough). I also have a low opinion of the Peasant Railgun, since that’s reliant on the readied actions of other characters and not your own movement speed.
I do take some delight in having what I believe is the current fastest build in 5e, but I fully expect to have someone beat me to the punch when the next speed boost is codified. At least I can hope that they’ll be basing the build off of this.
Fun fact, this speed after the first update now surpasses 330 feet base walk speed. With multipliers, this means you are literally moving more than a mile a second. ...Figuratively? You’re not your character, so you’re not the one moving but you’re taking their persona as their creator so you... oh no i’ve gone crosseyed

CHANGELOG

2/11/21.4
• Made the Sibriex Warping more reliable.
• Touched up the order of events in which you should have your effects granted by effect duration. With the exception of the Shapechange shenanigans, it now goes from Permanent, to Hour, to Minute, to Round.
• Gave Transmuter Metamagic Adept.
2/11/21.3:
• Changed Paladin ally's Glamour Bard 3 for Creation Bard 6.
• Broke Mach 5.
• Credit for the above goes to u/Simple_Ferret4383
2/11/21.2:
• Reverted Mantle of Inspiration to Dissonant Whispers. RAW can't ready a Bonus Action.
2/11/21.1:
• Inverted decision on Elk Totem 3.
• Added Glyph of Warding and Elk Rage bullshit. It’s a whole paragraph.
• Removed College of Spirits UA mention in Afterword.
• Gave the Paladin Graviurgist levels, also granted Bard subclass.
• Replaced readied Dissonant Whispers’ reaction with the one from Mantle of Inspiration.
• Added Sibriex warping. Nasty stuff.
• Thanks to u/ChazPls, u/SethTheFrank, u/ALemmingInSpace, and u/Semako for the input listed above!
submitted by VexxMyst to 3d6 [link] [comments]

[1.1 Update] Complete List of Verified Perks (Working / Not Working / Partially Working) [WIP]

Update: All items and perks testing completed. Still updating based on feedback as it comes in. I'll update the text below soon.
Update: Added a tab for bonuses per skill level and attribute level
Update: Tested the non functioning (Partially or Not Working) perks/items for the 1.11 hotfix. Several changes noted in the change log. I think I'll reserve testing the whole list for more significant updates, but definitely looking out for people posting/messaging about things they found that are not working/working. Already got 1 perk not working that was before.

Up to date Perks and Items and Skill Levels Testing can be found here: Link to Spreadsheet

Hope you guys find this helpful!
Reddit list last updated: 1/26/2021

Body - Athletics

Body - Annihilation

Body - Street Brawler

Reflexes - Assault

Reflexes - Handguns

Reflexes - Blades

Intelligence - Breach Protocol

Intelligence - Quickhacking

Technical Abilities - Crafting

Technical Abilities - Engineering

Cool - Stealth

Cool - Cold Blood

submitted by iCheekz to cyberpunkgame [link] [comments]

A Bow Guide - For all Levels

Here are some tips for those of you who are starting out with bows, or maybe wanting to learn more about them, from someone who has over 31,000 crucible final blows with them over the course of the 2 or so years that they've been in the game.If there's something I've missed, I'd like to know in the comments so that I can add it to the post, or at the least to my own knowledge.
In general, there are standard rolls that are perfect for lightweight and precision frame bows.
Lightweights have a few more options for you, and it depends on how you are using them.
The only thing that persists across all of the bows is that you're aiming for Fiberglass Arrowshaft as your second column perk - this is because of the effect to the accuracy stat.

Accuracy and Stability

Accuracy is to increase the length of the aim assist cone, and be able to hit shots easier at a distance, and the stability stat is to keep the cone from expanding as much in the air, and to help you deal with close quarters, mid range, hip fire and fast firing engagements.
The recoil direction actually depicts which side your bow is likely to land after firing a shot, so counterbalance mods may have a small effect here

Lightweights

The String and Masterwork

The string and masterwork are very much tied together on these frames, and it depends on what you're going for.
There's a draw time cap of 540 on lightweight frames (even the perk archers tempo only reduces this to around 536) - If you have Elastic String, I would recommend an Accuracy Masterwork, however, you can get away with a Reload Masterwork if you have Moving Target, or another accuracy increasing perk available. For the strings with a higher draw time, you'll want a draw time masterwork almost every time. If you're wanting handling, go with Flexible String - It's an absolutely solid choice on the Arsenic Bite, but if you want to increase your accuracy, Polymer String is the play.

Precision Frames

The String and Masterwork

You're always going to want Elastic String on these frames. Choose between a Draw Time or a Reload Masterwork.
I personally prefer the Draw Time of 576, over the reload bonus, which can be catered to with mods and exotics

Legendary Damage Numbers and Perks

Draw Type Precision Lightweight
No Draw Body ↓ 61 ↑ 71
Quarter Draw Body ↓ 67 ↑ 76
Half Draw Body ↑ 91 ↓ 81
Full Draw Body ↑ 101 ↓ 86
Over Draw Body ↑ 95 ↓ 84
No Draw Precision ↓ 91 ↑ 113
Quarter Draw Precision ↓ 100 ↑ 121
Half Draw Precision ↓ 109 ↑ 129
Full Draw Precision ↑ 152 ↓ 138
Over Draw Precision ↑ 143 ↓ 134
Explosive Heads will take half of the damage from the original arrow and put it into a blast radius, instead of being a flat damage number - this means that the more you draw back, the more your explosion will do. This can range from 31-51 (precision frames) and 35-43 (lightweights).Note: Explosive Heads themselves are unaffected by Rampage, Swashbuckler and other damage related perks.
Rampage on precision frames will 1 tap at 3x, or at 1x with most other damage buffs. On lightweights it's used to up the weapon consistency. 2 bodyshots with 1x rampage will kill 4th tier resil and less, and 2x will double body any guardian.
Dragonfly will do around 49-56 damage while I was testing, and when you add dragonfly spec, it increases to 95.
Swashbuckler is quite possibly the most broken damage perk on bows. Pair with a damage buffing melee (or any other damage buff) on lightweights to one shot kill (before the buff it will do 183 to the head at x5). Precision Frames will deal 202 on a perfect draw at x5, killing every guardian.
Rapid Hit is pretty much a dead perk if you have bow reloader, as it will go up to around x3 before it stops having an effect. If you have anything else that enhances reload speed (ophidian aspects come to mind as a great one) then it really becomes useless.
Archers Tempo is a risky perk to have. You'll want it on a bow with a draw time that is greater than its archetypes minimum to get any noticeable effect out of it, but if you feel like you need more accuracy and prefer a longer draw because of that, then this will be the perk for you. I’ll be trying to get some more numbers for this over the next week or so.
Moving Target and Surplus are two neutral perks that are fantastic. If you use your abilities often, I'd go with moving target, but a heart of inmost light titan or someone more conservative with their abilities may prefer surplus.
Snapshot Sights is a great perk on bows, and will give you a good transition point if you're used to Le Mon's ADS speed.
Opening Shot is a fantastic perk if you're having issues with the accuracy (perhaps you don't have Fiberglass in the second column) - and even if you do, this will make your shots crisp as all hell at a distance.
Killing Wind is absolutely a fantastic perk to go for, and going for Natural Fletching instead of Fiberglass can be recommended in this case, as the stability + the extra weapon aim assist range will doubly effect the accuracy cone
Sympathetic Arsenal is the archers auto loading holster, meaning you can use your killing capacity to reload that machine gun in PvE, or the quickdraw fusion in your back pocket in PvP. Don’t sleep on the pairing with fighting lion either, double dipping for consistency on the thin the herd playstyle, always having your heavy loaded
Firmly Planted is an interesting one, as it will increase accuracy, stability and aim down sights speed while crouched - this also procs on slides - and drawing back your arrow at the start of a slide will mean it’s drawn by the time you’ve finished, the whole time, your arrows will be more sticky

Lightweight Frames

A no draw headshot and no draw body shot will kill at 2nd tier resil, but a quarter draw is needed above that for 1 of the arrows - preferably the head to cover most resilience tiers, but a body should cover 6th tier and less.

Precision Frames

You're gonna need to flick shot the head twice at a quarter draw or more, or fully draw and hit the head before you can flickshot an arrow into someones body. Note: A guardian at max resilience will survive the double quarter draw flick approach
You can also body shot and melee with this build with no buffs in a perfect draw (max resil) or an overdraw (6th tier or lower)

Exotic Damage Numbers

Draw Type Le Monarque Trinity Ghoul Wishender Leviathans Breath
No Draw Body 61 21x3 61+30 51
Quarter Draw Body 67 23x3 65+30 100
Half Draw Body 91 25x3 68+30 143
Full Draw Body 101+24 35x3 72+30 343
Over Draw Body 95 33x3 71+30 300
No Draw Precision 91 31x3 109+30 91
Quarter Draw Precision 100 34x3 116+30 159
Half Draw Precision 109 37x3 122+31 228
Full Draw Precision 152+24 52x3 129+30 548
Over Draw Precision 143 49x3 126+30 479

Vorpal Weapon (Precision Frame) Damage Numbers

Super Head Body
Goldie 181 121
Chaos Reach 145 97
Blade Barrage 124 83
Well of Radiance 121 81
Daybreak 119 79
Hammers 119 79
Nova Warp 119 79
Shadebinder 119 79
Spectral Blades 117 78
Sentinel 114 76
Striker 114 76
Arc Staff 114 76
Burning Maul 114 76
Thundercrash 114 76
Tether (while tethering) 114 76
Revenant 114 76
Spectral Blades (Invis) 111 74
Behemoth 97 65

The Reticle and Draw Length

⊙ | | | - This is what the reticle looks like when you aren't drawn back (well, this is sideways, but you get the idea) - when you draw back your arrow, the bottom lines will be accurate for a quarter draw and the lines will get closer together past the half draw mark to keep accurately representing the flight distance - ⊙||| - before disappearing entirely when you're fully drawn back and you no longer have to lead your target - ⊙
If you're sprinting towards a target, tap/pull back in the opposite direction to be able to get that reticle back (same as every weapon in destiny) so you can judge the distance to draw time and actually start drawing back your bow without having a small delay or whiff entirely because of it cancelling your sprint instead of drawing
When you're aimed down sights, there is a line at the bottom of the reticle, that will be accurate up to around 15 and 20 meters before you have to judge additional falloff height (precision and lightweight no-draw ranges respectively) this distance will increase the longer that you draw.
Draw Type Precision Lightweight Line
No Draw ↓ 12m ↑ 18m Bottom
Quarter Draw ↑ 24m ↓ 20m Middle
Half Draw ↑ 31m ↓ 25m Top
Full draws and near perfect draws will tend towards being on target to the center of the reticle - and it's just about practice (note, when I'm using quarters and halves, it's more about where the string is drawn back visually, rather than how long you've been drawing back, as that depends on what string you have).
The lower draws can be effective, but they do require learning of how your draw time effects the flight path and where you have to release your shot to get the best accuracy - if you want to rely more on flick shots and getting your accuracy down, you could go for a higher draw time lightweight frame to train with before increasing the draw time when you’re able to judge your shots better.
A perfect draw isn't when the bow starts glowing, there's about an 8 frame window just before where the arrow will release silently and do full damage. That's the perfect draw.

Builds

Get Down Mr President

Simply shoulder charge your way to 1 tap headshots

But I am the shotgun...

Shoot with the shotgun, 1 down, punch the next, 2 down, dodge and switch to Trinity Ghoul, punch again, 3 down, shoot the floor with trinity and carry on punching... FANTASTIC WORK You now have all of the combination blow, so just trinity the floor and punch away

Thomas the Siege Engine

I'm not sure if this one even needs explaining - but when you make a sunspot, stand in it and have swashbuckler, you'll one tap

Wrath of Cupid

Like with the first build, except you can deliver the punch down the hallway heal from it, pop heat rises for perfect in air accuracy and kills to get your melee back to start the entire process again

Corrosive Sting

Invis when you're crouching and get that precision final blow, poison clouds everywhere and the ability to melee yourself out of most situations, this will be the build for you if you like watching your opponents suffer in their final moments. Also, note, if you hit someones face with your smoke from a distance and they stay in the cloud, they're probably going to die from that alone

A Hunger For Wishes

You can see through walls, you can bounce grenades off of walls, you can no draw bodyshot guardians and clean them up with a melee to heal and you can debuff the surrounding enemies with a fully charged melee. I don’t even know what the damage numbers are on regular guardians on a full draw, it doesn’t display, it just deletes and you heal. Run alongside your favourite behemoth buddy for their tectonic harvest for the best results
Edit
I’m going to start working on a PvE post like this, as there will be a lot more damage numbers - I hope that you don’t mind waiting until next season for it though
submitted by kfairns to DestinyTheGame [link] [comments]

I heard you guys like reading patch notes... So how about a fake one?

General / QoL

Gameplay

Gacha / Shop

In Consideration

Items

Coop

Battlepass / 12 Episode Anime

Quests

Elemental Reactions

  • Vaporize's Steam deals aoe damage
  • Overloads damage (electro->pyro) now deals x1.5 (pyro) damage
  • Overloads damage (pyro->electro) now deals x2 (pyro) damage.
  • Overload's knockback decreased significantly
  • Superconduct's damage (electro->cryo) now deals 2x (cryo) damage
  • Superconduct's damage (cryo->electro) now deals 1.5x (cryo) damage
  • Superconduct's negative armor debuff is moved to Melt
  • Melt gains the negative armor debuff due to the sudden temperature change, making surfaces brittle.
  • Melt damage consequently reduced. (pyro->hydro) at x1.4% , (hydro->pyro) at x1.8%
  • Geo New Reaction : Smoldering Rock or something (pyro->geo)(reverse not applicable) deals x0.3 (pyro damage) on top of crystallize
  • Geo New Reaction : Mud or something (hydro->geo)(geo->hydro) deals x0.1 (geo damage) on top of crystallize, slows enemy movement
  • Geo New Reaction : Snow or something (hydro->geo)(reverse not applicable) deals x0.2 (cryo damage) on top of crystallize, slows enemy attack speed
  • Geo New Reaction : Seeds or something (dendro->geo) deals x0.1 (dendro damage) on top of crystallize, restores 3% of your hp. Or entangle. Prevents enemy movement (can still attacc and cast spells)

Enemies

  • Enemies inside domains and abyss have their return-to-spawn-point-then-regenerate-to-full-health disabled.
  • Enemy AI a bit smarter. Those with mobility skills (whopper, smol geovishap, cycin mages) won't follow you to drown in the water. The game will not check if you are wet , but if you are in a swimming state.
  • Enemies attack cycle improve. Fixed bug when enemies stop attacking. Baedou Problems.
  • Hydro Abyss Mage's and Hydro Fatui Gunner's Hydro Barrier now takes the same damage rate/ratio from opposing elements (cryo,electro) for consistency.
  • Hydro barrier new opposing element : Geo. It makes it harder to maintain the water shield due to the mud soaking up the water and adding weight.
  • Boss Childe's Spirit Whale Attack generates water in the sides of the arena, pushing you towards the center. You must have enough stamina to keep dashing to the sides before he does this, or you will have to perfectly dodge the spirit whale attack.
  • Hydro SamaChurl now heals at a rate of +300/HoT per AR Milestone instead of percentage. This is for when you are hunting a LawaChurl Bounty that is near dead and healed to full health in 3 seconds. Having a fixed amount of healing ensures that it is big enough for the intended smaller enemies and portionally good enough for large enemies. The other option is to use different healing ratios for small and large enemies.
  • Queen of Pain , I mean Cycin Mages have a stagger window when they are about to cast their almost-undispellable shield
  • Zed , I mean Shadow Fatui Agent makes use of his shadows to dodge your attack sometimes.
  • Smol Geo Vishap now drops less geo shields
  • Smol Geo Vishap now uses his rolling attack near you, not 150m away from you.
  • Smol Geo Vishap now burrows a bit less frequently
  • Ruin Hunter doesn't stay in the air up and raining artillery forever , in consideration of bowless comps
  • Fatui Cryo and Hydro Gunner Turn Rate Reduced by 10% when on Spray Mode.
  • Primo GeoVishap now has a tired/exhausted animation, instead of standing still and looking at you and what life could have been for 10 seconds.
  • Primo GeoVishap spin attack now has a 0.2 dodge window (previously none) and Spin Radius Decreased by 100m.

Characters

  • Dvalin's Cutscene when you dispel his barrier is removed and much smoother. He just falls in place and no clipping.
  • Character's "Main Stat" is now visible in attributes. Previously you can only know it when ascending or when using google, or if you really have a big brain.
  • All characters passive talents are now combat related.
  • All characters now have their own cooking/exploration/crafting/smithing talents. It is possible not to have OR have multiple talents in each category. We get it , everyone can taste what a good gravy is, but not everyone can make a good gravy.

Ayaka

  • Alternate sprint binded to a different hotkey.
  • Yes I came from the future.

Albedo

  • Elevator can be activated to go up and down by using the F key.
  • C2 stack counter / indicator via particles (think of razor geo sigils)
  • C4 plunged attack covers albedo's sword in geo energy (like noelle, but smol)
  • C6 crystallize shield has a different shape (leaf)

Amber

  • Increased ultimate radius by a tiny bit.
  • Allow targeting of ulimate by holding the ultimate button.
  • If baron bunny is present in the ultimate radius, it will absorb all pyro damage and deal it as bonus damage when it blows up.
  • If baron bunny was "charged" with pyro rain and hit with a C2 charged shot, it will trigger a micheal bay explosion animation.

Barbara

  • Restored Barbara's Energetic Voice Lines
  • New Lines sold seperately as Dark Barbara™ , comes with a Dark Dress
  • C6 Revive indicator is now visible as a buff.
  • C4 now generates flying energy particles instead of instantly regaining energy. Mind you that this is a fucking nerf to this piece of shit healer that freezes you. It's just that there's no flying particles when you use this hero.

Beidou

  • Casting the elemental skill applies a strong taunt and re-initializes enemies attack loop.
  • Bullet Time effect added when triggering a perfect counter, when playing in single player mode.
  • The ultimate's chain lightning deals tiny spark damage if it didn't jump.
  • C2 chain lightning has a different color.
  • C4 buff is triggered when you do a perfect counter (Taking damage to activate a skill promotes bad gameplay)
  • C4 perfect counter grants the maximum damage bonus
  • C4 shield has a different color.
  • C6 has aura on the ground (inspired by Dota 2's Necrophos , but purple)

Bennet

  • C6 Ultimate pyro infusion just adds pyro damage to your attacks, and won't convert them fully into pyro.
  • C6 Ultimate restores up to 100% hp.

Childe

  • Improved manly posture when in aiming mode
  • C4 Riptide slash and flash uses different coloparticles/animation
  • C6 has an indicator when it works and when it is available

Chongyun

  • Cryo Field's Cryo infusion just adds cryo damage to your attacks, and won't convert them fully into cryo.

Diluc

  • What seriously? You really want more?
  • Fuck this guy in particular
  • Elemental Sword Duration Indicator added
  • C6 his flames has some bluish tint

Diona

  • Fixed shield duration bug and increased by additional 1.1 seconds per claw.
  • Shield ratio based off max hp increased by 10%
  • C2 reduces skill cooldown by -2 seonds (press) and -4 (hold). The coop shield is added by default out of the box. Anything coop should not be locked behind a paywall because it will hurt the game and fanbase.
  • C4 has been reworked to grant normal and aimed uncharged shots 25% chance to deal charged attack shots.
  • C6 radius is increased and uses a different color.

Fischl

  • Ultimate now deals tiny bit of damage per 0.2 seconds tick when making contact with enemies (aside from getting hit by lightning once)
  • Ultimate can fly/pass through thorn walls. I'm looking at you Dendro Samachurl.
  • Shadow Raven Let Night F---!!!
  • C4 Ultimate hp restored now scales off damage dealt by the ult.

Ganyu

  • holding the elemental skill allows you to aim and won't make you backdash
  • C4 Freezing Field changes color intensity per damage increase
  • C6 free frost charged arrow now works with normal unaimed attacks.
  • C6 uses a different particle color. Sometime it turns into a bazooka.

Jean

  • Reduced Increased swaying of boobs by a tiny amount while holding the skill. You can kinda feel them slapping against your face. You can almost describe their softness and warmth in a minimum of 10 pages apart from you going sommelier describing how deep her sweat tastes like.
  • Jean's Charged Attack Launch Height is too damn high that you cant even hit the enemy, so - Reworked Jean's Charged Attack : Holding the attack button launches the enemy in the air. If you keep holding it down you will perform 3 slashes in the air. If you let go early you will stay on the ground.
  • Base Attack Increased by +5
  • Jean can now pick up the slimes dropped by enemies and use it against them for a bighead move
  • Ultimate radius is increased
  • Ultimate Wall Mechanic Reversed. Enemies are now trapped inside. When you use your skill (usually to regain energy) you can air-wall slam them. Block Projectiles from outside.
  • If any of you actually played jean support, a normal person would use ult to heal, cast skill to regain energy, then switch back to other characters. It doesn't make fucking sense to push them outside your wind arena because you want to fight inside the swirl/healing zone.
  • Ultimate swirls every 0.2 seconds , depending on what elements are inside. Field Changes Color Each Time Like a Disco Ball
  • Ultimate now slowly succs enemies to the center(without lifting them up)
  • Ultimate Damage is consequently reduced.
  • C1 Uses a different colored windblast
  • C2 Buff Indicator
  • C4 uses a different color wind field
  • C6 Ultimate is now an aura and moves with you. To break away from "buffed area" convention.
  • C6 Ultimate will get you to keep the windsaber for the ult's duration
  • C6 Shield Buff Indicator via Particle and Status Icon

Kaeya

  • Base attack incresed by 5
  • Elemental Skill (Hold) Sprays Ice , think of Igni but Ice in Witcher 3 or DND's Burning Hands
  • C2 Icicles light up when you defeat an enemy indicating that it really works
  • C4 Barrier is of different shape
  • C6 uses a different icicle particle for bling purposes

Keqing

  • Aiming mode feels a lot smoother. You can aim while moving and cursor immediately shows and the kungfu pose is only done when throwing the stilleto.
  • When in single player mode, casting your ultimate produces a bullet time effect.
  • C4 Buff Indicator
  • C6 Description is confusing as fuck.
  • C6 Buff indicator
  • C6 Makes your sword light up like a lightsaber.

Klee

  • Imroved Torch/Bonfire/Campfire and the likes Lockon (if there's any to begin with)
  • Throwing Jumpty Dumpty provides 0.1s iframe during her spin
  • Ult is now no longer greedy. Pyro satellites remain when you switch characters, making our lovable klee open up for support options. Child support.
  • C4 is now manually triggered, Pressing q again will make her explode, bigger damage based off remaining duration. less duration left, less damage.
  • C6 klee uses different bombs

Lisa

  • A lingerie shop is opened in Mondstadt to change her pantsu, socks and garter belt style and colors. Black Leather Tight Suit™ Sold Seperately.
  • Option to wear glasses as a Librarian added.
  • Climbing voice volume is re-mastered in asmr microphone, in all languages.
  • Requires "i am of legal age" consent in the user center
  • Elemental skill (press) aoe slightly increased.
  • Base attack increased by 15.

Mona

  • Alternate dash is now binded to alt key.
  • Hydro Puppet now deals half damage upon cast and half damage upon explosion.
  • C6 normal attacks use a different attack animation.

MC (Anemo)

  • Palm vortex can be casted in midair to break your fall (but not propel you up)

MC (Geo)

  • When you overlap geo boulders (aimed mode) it will trigger the geo explosion of the older rock, then replace it with a new one

Ningguang

  • Holding the skill button surrounds her in mini jade screens , unable to perform any action until it is released or ends. Useful for cinematic stuff. Imagine tanking childe's whale attack. Or someone wants to recreate triple rashomon scene.
  • C6 has a chance to use different attack animation.
  • C6 star jade now resembles a primo gem.

Noelle

  • Elemental Sword Duration Indicator added
  • C1 heals have a special effect and voice line when conditions are met.
  • C2 upgrade uses a different charged attack animation.
  • C4 uses a different barrier color
  • C6 upgrade uses different ult (possibly red with the same hue as her skirt) color.

Qiqi

  • C2 reworked as -15% attack debuff
  • C4 reworked as -20% elemental resistance debuff
  • C6 cooldown/availability indicator.
  • C6 has a different bling/color

Razor

  • Transformation Duration Indicator added
  • C1 increased damage now really works
  • C1 now has a buff indicator that it really works
  • C2 now has a special crit indicator
  • C4 armor shred now has a (claw mark) armor shred indicator that it really works
  • C4 (hold) has increased damage so it doesn't feel left out. It also has electro explosions similar to when you mine an electric ore as a special effect to indicate that you are C4 and have a big PP.
  • C6 covers your sword with electricity (like diluc) when it is charged and ready
  • Yes I play razor a lot.

Sucrose

  • Fixed crafting bug not producing any bonus when using large quantities (say 100+)
  • Improved lock on when blowing off dandelion flowers. Idk how she keeps missing them even at point blank range, Hell , at any given range.
  • C1 if you overlap the wind nukes the second one will be a 0.1s delay then it will go off with a slightly bigger radius
  • C2 ult has a different color
  • C4 has an indicator that it works
  • C6 buff indicator

Venti

  • Wind current generated by skill (hold) allows him to fall slower without gliding, and allows him to shoot wind lasers. Ehe
  • C2 Charged Shot produces a bullet time effect when shot at point blank or if all 3 arrows hit a single enemy. Sometimes he draws the holy lyre and it transforms into a primitive shotgun.
  • C4 buff indicator.
  • C6 uses different vacuum color

Xiangling

  • Ultimate deals additional damage when cast at point blank because you get stab and bonk while she is twirling her spear.
  • C2 last attack leaves a flaming trail special effect (inspired by kyo or iori from king of fighters)
  • C6 upon cast, Xianling automatically does a speed-up full normal attack combo and then releases the pyronado normally (while covered in flames or some shit). If you are in single player mode and there are no other enemies within 150 radius the ult will cause the screen to black out, like in legend of legaia.
  • C6 during the ultimate if it contacts with gouba's flames it produces micheal bay effects while raining carpet bombs and shit.
  • Yes flat is justice.

Xingqiu

  • Floating Swords Duration added
  • Fixed crafting bug not producing any bonus when using large quantities (say 100+)
  • C4 Allows you to hold the elemental skill for double backflips (inspired by law from tekken) cooldown is 1 month.
  • C4 Elem Skill leaves a faint rainbow (when ulted)
  • C6 Swords emit faint rainbow color. Rainbow power motherf-

Xinyan

  • Hitting large enemies counts as 2 enemies.
  • C1 buff indicator
  • C2's level 3 shield has some bluish flames
  • C6 charged attack uses a diffent attack animation or has an indicator that it works

Xiao

  • Transformation Duration Indicator added
  • C2 now leaves a trail of anemo energy that deals tiny bit of damage , trail lasts for 1 second and deals at 0.2s intervals.
  • C6 plunge attack counts large enemies as 2.
  • C6 plunge-attack-no-cooldown-empowered-dashes uses a different particle color and produces a bullet time effect when used for the 3rd time onwards. useful for cinematic purposes
  • C6 during the bullet time you can sneak in a normal attack once per dash
  • Bullet time is always disabled in multiplayer

Zhongli

  • Increased pillar aoe by a tiny bit
  • Generates energy particles per pulse, maximum of 1 enemy per pillar
  • Base attack increased by 5
  • Travelers can redeem promo code "WHOSYOURDADDY" for additional +5 damage, regardless if they have the hero or not.
  • Attack ratios increased by 3% per attack category.
  • C1 has a slightly bigger dong eherm statue
  • C4 Chaos Meteor errrr I mean Order Meteor has a different rock color
  • C6 shield uses a different color , come on you get the drift already.
  • C6 Meteor is affected by the element of the barrier you are wearing. The element is dealt as secondary damage, primary damage is still geo. (flaming space rock?)

Why different coloparticles/animation when you have C1-C6 upgrade?

It makes whales feels special, and it gives F2P players something to aspire for. It makes you want to spend with all the bling. Particle recolor is easy peasy and can be deployed within minutes. Attack animations on the other hand are time consuming. It almost always put smile in people's faces when a whale shows up in a ferrari. "Dude check this out a C6 GeoDaddy joined my domain run. Look at the size of his statue. Oh my what a BIG meteor."

Why are you doing this?

It's just for my amusement. I'm still adding random thoughts now that 1.3 has launched. I don't care if nothing gets implemented. I would nut hard in my shorts with QoL and alleged bug/bugfixes mentioned in this post more than anything.

Afterword

Leave your thoughts below. Sorry and not sorry for the broken engrish , feel free to copy and paste whatever, use it wherever idc as long as it doesn't annoy or harm someone. Translate it in your language etc. No credits needed etc. Let your mind flow

After-Afterword

  • Thanks for the awards and all kinds of reception
  • You guys are awesome and insane that's a shit load of awards thank you.
submitted by lordpuza to Genshin_Impact [link] [comments]

Slay the Spire and its "family"

https://steam.cryotank.net/wp-content/gallery/slaythespire/Slay-the-Spire-01-HD.png
Slay the Spire (StS) has finally arrived to Android! For two years many of us dreamed for this legendary game to be accessible on their mobile devices, and finally the day has come. No need to talk about how awesome this game is, how it basically started a new genre of card-based dungeon crawlers (UPD: or roguelike deck-builders, if you prefer the term), and even about how well or poor it works on Android hardware in its current state (there will be lots of these posts during the days to come). What I wanted to talk about is the impact this game had on (specifically) mobile industry and how other developers were able to utilize this innovative formula in their own products.
Personally, I am somewhat glad that StS release was delayed that much. This allowed a lot of "clones" to be spawned, many of which I enjoyed playing. Some of them appear to be straight rip-offs, but others introduced many fresh ideas of their own, some even surpassing the predecessor's greatness. What the heck am I talking about and how is this even possible will be revealed to you, should you decide to stay on a bit and read through the article below.

General info

First and foremost, let's clarify the important thing: card based dungeon crawlers are not Collectible Card Games (CCGs). Even though they share the same ideas, and some of them (StS included) even have a feature to permanently improve starting cards, or a mode to play with pre-constructed decks, this is not the case for the genre in general. There is no place for multiplayer and PvP battles here: a turn-down for the most, but an undeniable advantage for the rest - only though-out puzzle-like single-player experience which we can pause at any moment and continue when the time is appropriate. Thus, there will never be troubles with downtime, matchmaking, ratings, overpowered builds and other PvP stuff, as there will never be a satisfaction of crushing your opponents with the power of your mighty intellect... The fun of discovering interesting synergies between various card combinations is still present, though.
With this being said, let's quickly look through the core features of the genre, which will be relevant for almost every game we review below: - we must explore a dungeon, which (usually, but not necessarily) consists of three floors with increasing difficulty; - we have limited control over the order in which to face the challenges; - there is a powerful boss in the end of each floor; - we battle using deck of cards, usually drawing new cards from deck to hand each turn; - there is a limitation on how many cards we can play during our turn; - we start with a weak basic deck, but get new cards as rewards for fighting enemies; - there is a possibility to permanently remove (weak) cards from the deck; - successful gameplay strategies revolve around utilizing the synergies between different cards; - there are several character classes, each with their own cards and tactics; - there are often additional items to acquire in the dungeon, providing bonuses and emphasizing specific types of play;
Before Slay the Spire (StS) came out, there was another card-based dungeon crawler called Dream Quest (DQ), which considered by many to be the first game of the genre (at least the first one to make a significant impact). Not sure if the former drew inspiration from the latter, but certain parallels can easily be drawn: in fact, all of the features mentioned in the list above are valid for DQ the same way as it is for StS. The rich plethora of card based dungeon crawlers (both PC/Console and mobile) originated from some combination of the two.
StS, however, can not be considered a clone of DQ, as it introduced a lot of original ideas and spawned its own line of descendants. It is always interesting to analyze each new title to see which of two games was the biggest inspiration, and to group them accordingly. For me the main criteria lies in the core difference in battle system: - in StS, enemies (usually multiple) show their intentions at the beginning of each turn, so we know what to expect and what to play against; - in DQ, the enemy (usually single) draws and plays cards the same way as we do, often using the same abilities and synergies we ourselves can use.
Introductions aside, let's finally get to the interesting part - the games! (Note: Games are listed in alphabetical order to not give any privileges to one over another. For my personal preferences see the comment section).

Dream Quest clones

Call of Lophis takes us on a grim journey through infested lands full of deadly monsters, dangerous traps, and one of the most ridiculous card art I have ever seen. It's surprising to see how dark fantasy elements combine with the humor and gags this game presents. From the gameplay point of view, there is enough card variety and interesting synergies, but it will take a long time to reach the interesting parts. Really: this game just does not know when to end, forcing new and new dungeon locations onto us with basically the same monsters and same approaches to dealing with them over and over. Its the boss battles which crank the difficulty up to over 9000, and if we don't have the right deck by the time we reach them, there is nothing we can do to pull it off. Plus there is some shady business going on with monetization schemes, where even paid version of the game makes us spend money to unlock additional classes and grind a lot to buy permanent improvements. Only truly dedicated players will be interested in dealing with all this nonsense. [...] UPD: Haven't checked on it for a long time - maybe the situation improved somehow.
Crimson Deep is still in early alpha and was not updated for a long time. But the development hasn't stopped, and there is a new major release approaching in the nearest future. It makes no sense to talk about the game till then: the version in the store is too raw to provide any significant gameplay experience, but it would be interesting to see where it goes in the end.
Dimension of Dream is probably the only game that has the same grid-based dungeon layout as DQ itself. This time with full 3D and a possibility to fight only limited set of enemies before facing the final boss (which allows to moderate difficulty as we go, either defeating tougher enemies with better rewards, or to save HP and fight only the easy ones). This game has one of the most interesting battle systems and 6 truly unique classes with deep complex strategies unlike anything we have ever seen (not only the cards themselves, but the order in which we play them greatly affects the outcome). Unfortunately, the English version was pulled from Google Play, leaving only Chinese version for Asian people to enjoy. UPD: Apparently, the game was re-released under different publisher with the title Dreaming Dimension, so there you have it. [...]
Meteorfall: Journeys offers the streamlined approach to dungeon crawling, where all our decisions boil down to Reigns-like "swipe left / swipe right" operation: picking the path, encounter resolutions, and even battles are simplified to utilize this binary choice mechanic. But don't worry: these specifics do not affect the gameplay, still providing enough strategic depth to appeal even to hardcore players. Add here a neat visual style, lots of character classes and their variations, cool card combos, and you get a true masterpiece, which is Meteorfall. [...]
Night of the Full Moon offers a fresh take on a fairy tale of Red Riding Hood, but adding darker elements to it (including werewolves, zombies, mad scientists and cursed cultists). It demonstrates an amazing production quality with top-tier art, beautiful audio support, and intriguing storytelling. Gameplay wise, we have the closest thing to DQ, safe for the grid-based dungeon maps, which were changed to just picking the encounter out of available three. Some people may argue that the game does not offer enough strategic variety, only suggesting a single best build for each class, but you will still get different runs due to the randomness of card and power-up drops. Another argument of it being too easy is completely nullified on higher difficulty levels. Wish the story would develop in a different direction, though. [...]
Spellsword Cards: Origins provides the gameplay similar to the Night of the Full moon, but focuses more on role-playing character development part. Aside from choosing a class, we also get to pick race with unique traits, and a school of magic, greatly affecting which cards will be available to us during the run. The problem here, though, is that monster encounters do not demonstrate a lot of variety, forcing us to fight the same enemies over and over, and the difficulty is rather high, with starting cards doing almost nothing and enemies quickly run out of hand with their devastating attacks, whereas good cards are hard to come by, and even then you will still be devastated on later stages. [...] UPD: Or maybe I am just bad at this game (welcome to comment section for valid strategy suggestions).

Slay the Spire clones

Blood Card offers a unique possibility to construct the dungeon ourselves, providing a pool of encounters of different types: regular monsters, elite monsters, events and shops. We pick a desired encounter from the pool, deal with it and then move on to the next one. Another interesting feature is that our health is defined by the number of cards in draw pile, which limits our tactical possibilities, but is compensated by the fact that we get multiple copies of cards as rewards for fighting enemies. There are a lot of interesting mechanics related to moving cards between various piles, as well as other neat features (like: the Death inevitably arrives in three turns and starts whacking everyone on the field with increasing persistence), but I'll leave them for you to discover on your own.
Card Crusade seemed like a cool idea of mixing classic "roguelike" dungeon crawling with its "deck-based" counterpart, where we explore the dungeon the same way as we do it in Hack, Angband, Pixel Dungeon and other similar games, but use cards to fight actual enemies. In reality though, this implementation just adds a useless abstraction, as the adventuring does not provide any tactical benefits and is only there to inter-connect battle sequences (heck, even breaking pots and chests does not give us any coin, of which developers themselves warn us at the very beginning!). The cards are not very interesting, with next to none cool synergies, and new classes (which should be unlocked by performing specific actions on previous runs) do not provide any major difference. [...]
Card Quest takes us on an epic journey through fantasy lands, where we will perform great deeds as one of the classic RPG hero classes (fighter, wizard, rogue, ranger), each with their own equipment and fighting disciplines. The interesting part is that the cards we use during runs are defined by said equipment, and if we find some new pieces during our adventure, we get to keep them for further runs. Also worth noting that defense cards are played not during our turn, but during enemy turn, which requires us to plan ahead a bit. This being said, the game is extremely hard - it will take a lot of unsuccessful tries to finally reach the end. But the variety of dungeons and possible builds will keep us occupied for long.
Dungeon Tales for a long time was the closest, yet simplified copy of StS mechanics (up to similar cards and gaming strategies), but without certain elaborate features, like upgrading cards or using potions. The basics are left intact though: we still build our deck along the way and face the powerful boss in the end. There are only two characters available yet, but each has a couple of viable builds, so it can keep us invested for quite some time. [...]
Endless Abyss is a close StS clone with very similar character classes (only two so far) and a lot of cards with exactly the same effects. Graphically the game looks very good, but angry monetization, lots of grinding, and forced ads make it almost impossible to fully enjoy. [...]
Heroes of Abyss is a predecessor to Endless Abyss with basically the same core gameplay, but very simplified dungeon crawling part. There is no floor map with choosing our path, nor there are elaborate adventure events: just a series of battles with the boss in the end. The spoils we get after each battle go into improving our starting deck and unlocking new difficulty modes with higher rewards. What makes the game unusual, is that we chose the preferred build right from the beginning with appropriate set of starting cards, without the need to rely on the randomness of card drops. It may be interesting to unlock and compare all the 6 available builds, but once the task is done, there is almost no reason to play the game further.
Heroes Journey provides a different setting for a change: this time we will play as space explorers, who crash landed on an alien planet. Thus, instead of familiar swords and bows, we will be wielding blasters and energy shields: the rest remains the same, up to the majority of cards straight up copied from StS. Unfortunately, this innovative idea was completely ruined by repetitive grinding and angry monetization, forcing player to make dozens of identical runs with the same small card pool, until something adequate is unlocked. Oh, and the game is long abandoned by the developers.
Pirates Outlaws is an amazing rework of original StS ideas in a pirate setting with some changes to gameplay mechanics, such as introducing persistent charges needed to play certain cards, and different buff/debuff statuses that replace each other. There are also some questionable features, such as ship stamina that deteriorates over the course of the journey and leads to game over if not repaired in time, or a quest system, where quests can not be completed in parallel, but instead picking the new quest resets your progress in the current one. Some may also argue that new classes take long to grind for, or expensive to pay for, but with permanent booster pack this should not be a problem. Anyway, the game is highly recommended for any StS fan. [...]
Rogue Adventure offers a twist to usual mechanic: our hand is limited by 4 cards, but each time we use one of them, a new card is immediately drawn to its place, thus we never run out of cards to play. Non-starting cards are common for all classes, but are grouped by type (or race), giving huge synergies depending on how many similar cards we have. Aside from this, the game offers diverse gameplay by providing a lot of different classes, each with its own unique strategies and dynamics, and some interesting items to work around. The developers constantly provide updates with bug fixes and new content, but be warned that new mechanics may break what you are already accustomed for.
Royal Booty Quest started as a straight rip-off from StS with the same classes and abilities, and even cards having the same names. And absolutely atrocious pixelated visuals, which were not possible to look at without eyes bleeding out. Over time, though, it developed its own unique mechanics and interesting card combinations, but the art style did not get any better. However, if this is not a problem, the game is enjoyable to an extent, but since it was not updated for a long time, I doubt it will keeps anyone's interest for long. [...]
Tavern Rumble adds an unusual strategic element - a 3x3 grid, on each units and enemies are placed. The core gameplay remains the same (we still see what opponents are planning to do each turn and adjust our own strategy accordingly), but the addition of the grid introduces another tactical layer: not only we should maximize the damage output, but also plan the layout for our troops to provide the effective delivery of said output, while at the same time establish enough defense to minimize the damage to ourselves. There are a lot of cards and classes to play around, different play modes and a lot of features that are still being constantly added to the game. Some may argue about simplistic pixel graphics or long repetitive grinding, but it is easy to unlock everything within reasonable amount of time, even without paying. [...]

Other Games

Of course, my criteria does not work 100% of the time, as some games are way too different from anything else to confidently enroll them into one of the categories. They either demonstrate traits of both, or implement entirely unique mechanics of their own (which I like the most), while still maintaining the basic dungeon crawling ideas (so a lot of the games you might think of will not end up in the list). What I have in mind is the following:
Dungeon Reels removes the cards from card-based dungeon crawler - why bother, right? Instead, it provides some kind of a slot machine, where each turn three rows spin independently to pick available actions based on what slots we have in our reel. Winning battles awards us with new, better slots to add, each with their own specifics and synergies. Enemies also randomize their moves with slots of their own, but the most satisfying mechanic is the possibility to spin a jackpot with three identical slots for some powerful effect. It is interesting to see this concept developed further, but the game has not been updated for a long time.
Iris and the Giant takes us on journey through imaginary world, inspired by Ancient Greek mythology. Each battle takes place on a grid, where various enemies advance in huge numbers. We play a card from our hand, usually dealing damage to nearest enemy, and then everyone who is still standing and can reach us deals damage in return. There are cards that target multiple enemies at once, as well as ways to play more than one card during our turn, so most of the time we will be deciding which card to play at which moment. The deck has limited size, and if it becomes empty we lose, so new cards should be constantly acquired. There are a lot of interesting mechanics to discover, but the game is very hard and luck based, requiring a lot of trial-and-error to finally reach the end. [...]
Phantom Rose Scarlet has the same basic core, but with completely innovative battle system, not seen in any other game. On each turn there are four positions for cards to be played in strict order, where two of them are randomly filled with opponent's cards, and the remaining two are left for us to fill. Instead of drawing the hand, we have our entire deck available right away, but playing cards puts them on a cooldown, which does not reset between battles, so we constantly face the strategic choice of playing our best cards right away or keep them for later. The game is in active development, providing new mechanics and further developing the story, which is quite captivating here. [...]
Void Tyrant is a bit of a stretch, but still a "card based dungeon crawler", in which we basically play BlackJack against our enemies by dealing card with numbers from 1 to 6 one-by-one from our deck until we stand or bust. Whoever has the highest value wins and deals damage to the loser. There are various supporting cards on top of this mechanic, allowing us to either jinx the outcome in our favor, or to perform various other metagame manipulations. The only downside of the game is the lack of content, as it quickly runs out of interesting things, and since it was not updated for a long time, it is unlikely that anything new will be added in the future. [...]

Conclusion

As you see, there is a lot to play besides StS, so even if you are not hyped by its long-awaited Android release, but appreciate a good intellectual dungeon crawler, you will find something to suit your needs. I hope, even with StS release, new games of the genre will continue appearing on mobile phones, and I will gladly review them and add to the list. If you know any hidden gems (or even trash) that was not highlighted in this article, please share the names and/or links in the comments. I am also open to any discussions on the topic, as I am obviously able to talk a lot about my favorite genre.
Good luck to everyone in all your endeavors.
P.S. I am well aware of games like Dungeon Cards, Card Adventure, Dungeon Faster, Meteorfall: Krumitz Tale, Card Thief, Maze Machina, Cube Card, Card Hog, Fisherman, Relics of the Fallen and other "grid-based puzzles", but do not consider them to be a part of the "family".
submitted by Exotic-Ad-853 to AndroidGaming [link] [comments]

The Great Single Class Thief Compendium: how to be a non-Fighter fighting Thief, why Alchemy is underrated, a list of items to abuse with UAI, and a (complete?) list of Time Trap/Stop and backstab immune enemies. Among other shennanigans!

EDIT: Since I already wrote about it in the comments, I added a section about thieving skills point distribution.
First things first, this is the Enhanced Edition. It's what most people are playing and for good reason, so feel free to stop reading if that bothers you.
Second, aside from convenience stuff (like tweaks anthology's bottomless bag of holding mod), the only mod I use is SCS with pretty much everything maxed except without the "Tactical Challenges" (cause I just find them tactics-narrowing and, consequently, boring. I like the original SCS philosophy which is to just enhance the game's AI with few actual statistical/ability changes). If you like that option, ok, good for you. I did a few playthroughs with them back in the day, but didn't care for it too much.
Third, I just finished a playthrough of Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal (didn't feel like playing BG1/SoD this time around) with a Half-Orc Assassin, so that's what I'm gonna be focusing on, especially cause most people's complaints of single class thieves pertain to Throne of Bhaal.
With that said, let's get to it (feel free to skip certain sections, of course, it's a huge post):
THIEVING SKILLS POINT DISTRIBUTION (just copy and pasted it from my comment below, I didn't talk about it before cause it's too basic, but maybe some newbies might be reading this)
-There are several potions/equipment that increase your thieving skills, so you don't need to max out pickpocket, open locks or find traps. Plus, every point in dexterity increases every thieving skill except detect illusions by 5 points and you can increase dex permanently (eg tome) and temporarily (eg draw upon holy might).
-95 is enough to open every lock and find every trap in the trilogy. But if you can reach 25 str temporarily that gets you the equivalent of 85 open lock through bashing.
-You don't need much pickpocket unless you wanna steal from shops often, cause otherwise you can just buff it temporarily whenever you need it.
-Hide and move silently max out at 200 each, but 100 on one of them is reasonable enough to just hide outside of combat (remember you can use quick load to speed up your hide attempts outside of combat). 100 in both is enough to max out in dark areas (lighter areas and being outside during the day give you penalties). If you wanna run+hide constantly put more into it earlier. Or, if you're playing a shadowdancer you need as much of this as possible right away.
-Detect illusions can't be buffed so get it to 100, but you don't need it too much in bg1 cause there aren't many invisible/hidden enemies.
-Set traps should be at 100 for convenience, but you can live with a lower number if you only trap outside of combat and don't mind reloading. It's absolutely essential to max out if you wanna trap during combat (by running away first ofc otherwise you can't use it).
All in all, I just get some good hide/set traps/detect illusion early in soa and then start to minmax. Bg1 is really kit/strategy dependent but I ignore open lock/find traps for most of it (unlocking/disabling doesn't even get you much xp in bg1, why bother? Just take traps and bash locks unless doing no reload).
KITS
-Assassin: fantastic kit. Poison is a great buff (especially vs spellcasters, but not just that) with decent duration (5 rounds) that you can reapply a ton of times. That +1 to hit comes in super handy for thieves (who get worse thac0 progression than a cleric) and the +1 to damage actually makes a substantial difference when you consider it factors into backstabs. Every +1 damage (that factors into the backstab formula, so no Strength bonuses) means 7 extra damage on a single backstab or 63 extra damage in a single round of Assassination with 9 Attacks per Round (APR). And, of course, we get that sweet sweet x7 backstab, meaning Assassination can do MONSTROUS damage (easily over ~1000+ in a single round with 9APR).
-Bounty Hunter: also great, though it's been a while since I've played a solo one to judge it properly. Being able to throw the special traps and have them explode in a fireball-sized area is great and the Maze traps are underrated (they ignore magic resistance and there's no save!), cause anything with under 18 Intelligence (most enemies, pretty much) and not immune to maze (again, the vast majority of enemies, even dragons/demons are vulnerable) gets caught up for at least 2d4 (probably more) leaving you with a great opportunity to place traps for when they come back. Plus, the smarter folks come back sooner, meaning spellcasters will probably be left alone and take the brunt of the traps (whose damage can pretty much only be stopped by the exact physical/elemental-damage resistance).
-Swashbuckler: unnecessarily fighter-like IMO. As we'll see later, thieves can be quite the fighters if geared properly and it's rare that they're lacking either thac0 or AC. But since Swashbucklers get ridiculous amounts of thac0/AC by the end of the game it means you can get a little bit more creative with your gearing and access to Whirlwind is nice, I suppose. Not getting backstabs/access to Assassination is a huge bummer though.
Shadowdancer: super fun kit, but they miss out on some of the best parts of thieves: high level abilities (HLAs). Shadow Form (essentially a stronger, but short-lasting Hardiness+Improved Invisibility) is great, Shadow Twin is simply unnecessary (it's a Simulacrum, cool, but there are already two other sources of Simulacrum...) and their Shadow Maze is crappy compared to the Bounty Hunter's maze trap cause it doesn't ignore magic resistance, there's a save (at -4, admittedly) AND it only affects a single opponent, not an area. But the worst part is that they don't get the amazing thief traps and their Assassination is super nerfed with that x4 multiplier. So why are they still good? Because they still get Use Any Item (UAI), shadowstep lets you dispel illusions comfortably in the chaos of battle and give you time for your hide cooldown to reset, but, most importantly, hide-in-plain-sight allows for a cheeky combo:
Invisibility (not hiding) -> Backstab -> Insta-cast ability (eg use a wand if you're a single class SD or use a 0 casting time spell if you're a dual SD/Mage or Cleric) -> Hide (that's not on cooldown cause we weren't hidden to begin with, we were invisible before).
That means you can constantly do a backstab + use a wand or cast a spell (or a triggesequencer!) and hide before the enemy can do anything. So the more sources of invisibility you have, the more you can do in combat without ever being engaged! If the enemy doesn't just straight up ignore invisibility you can pretty much play without armor if you want (if your hide/move silently are good, ofc).
RACES
Human: good for dualing, of course. Swashbucklers and Shadowdancers are the best duals IMO, unless you're willing to dual crazy late for the x7 Assassin backstab (you can do it if you're playing solo, but I wouldn't recommend it in a full party with six-way shared XP).
Elf: -1 con makes no difference, but the +1 to dex is nice, cause we can easily get to 21 DEX (with 2 out of the 3 sources of +1 dex: BG1 Tome, the Machine of Lum and the Deck of Many Things) for that extra -1 AC and each point in dex gives us +5 to thieving skills (except Detect Illusions), but none of that is necessary cause we can still reach 21 DEX starting with 18 DEX and by the end of the game we'll have all the skills pretty much maxed out anyway. 90% charm immunity is nice though, I guess.
Half-Orc: my preferred choice. Why? Thieves need more thac0, especially against late-late game bosses that are immune to Time Traps/Time Stop (meaning we can't just auto-hit them) and having more thac0 when you're a class with poor thac0 progression is always nice. Plus, you get more damage. In BG1 alone it's a huge difference cause jumping from 18 to 19 STR means -2 bonus to thac0 and +7 to damage. By the end of the game we can have natural 23 Strength, which is more than any girdle can give us.
Other races: shorties are cool for saving throws, but thieves already get enough with all the saving throw-enhancing gear that UAI lets them use and with Greater Evasion that lowers them by a further 3 points. And we miss out on, again, what we need the most: thac0! The difference between maxing out at 22 and 23 is another extra point!
GEAR
Use Any Item is one of the main strengths of thieves, so, yes, talking about items is also talking about thieves. You can't ignore this.
-Weapons: "easy, you're an assassin, just get the Celestial Fury or the Staff of the Ram for great backstab damage!" Sure, if all you want to do a single powerful backstab to one-shot a single powerful enemy that's fine, go for those. But after getting HLAs what you want is Assassination potential and those weapons, surprisingly, aren't the best for that. Plus, you probably want a thief that can actually fight well in battles even after backstabbing and without needing to go away to hide again or whatever (though that's an option, of course).
So what's the big bad weapon combo? How do we turn out non-Fighter Thief into a fighting Thief? We need more APR. Belm+Kundane then? That'll get 1 base attack, 1 offhand attack, plus 2 main hand attacks. Double that if you're Improved Hasted, so 8 APR. Cool, but we can do a lot better than that.
Both Belm and Kundane are +2 weapons, meaning a bunch of powerful enemies will be immune to them. +3 is the real deal (only Demiliches, the Lesser Demon Lord from the eggs main quest, the Ravager, the Fallen Solar at the final battle and Watcher's Keep's Aurumach Rilmani are immune to +3 weapons). Besides, Kundane only has 1d6 base damage, meaning it weakens our Assassination potential.
The answer? Throwing daggers, motherf****! That's right! Throwing daggers ain't just for throwing!! Both the Boomerang Dagger +2 (which you can easily pickpocket right at the start of SoA) and the Firetooth +3 (available in Ust Nasha) give you an extra attack! It's just that you can't use them in the offhand, but that doesn't matter cause they're both great! Both do a respectable 2d4 damage (better than a long sword's 1d8!) and the Firetooh is a +3, plus it does 1d2 extra fire damage for some convenient troll killing and stoneskin harassing! So you use either of those in the main hand and Belm in the offhand, but if the enemy is immune to backstabs or immune to +2 weapons you switch Belm out to the Scarlet Ninja-to +3 (available in Joluv's shop at the Copper Coronet and useable by thieves with UAI!). Dope! 8 APR with a great +3 main hand weapon! As for the 9 APR... Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, which you can use after getting UAI. That's an extra 1/2 APR normally, but a full 1 extra APR with Improved Haste.
Other great weapons you should keep in mind are the usual (Mace of Disruption/Daystar against undead, that one staff that instakills golems you get in Ust Nasha... But there's more that people don't often talk about, like:
-The Blackmist Halberd you get from giving the eggs to the Lesser Demon Lord in Ust Nasha, which is great in a secondary weapon slot cause it lets us cast area blindness (blindness is one of the best spells in the game) once per day.
-The Sling of Arvoreen that stuns in an area for 3 rounds (auto-hits for our 9APR thief!).
-The Darkfire Bow available in ToB for its long-lasting (23 rounds) improved haste cast.
-The Answerer in ToB if you really want to worse the enemy's AC (I didn't need to resort to it once in my playthrough, but you can use it if you want).
EDIT: as mentioned by semiticgod, "The Staff of the Magi can royally screw with Sendai in ToB. Unlike some other ToB enemies, the drow cannot see through invisibility, though SCS Sendai and company will use divination spells (the Cloak of Non Detection can preserve the staff's invisibility despite those spells)". I totally forgot to fight the Twisted Rune before going to ToB, so I screwed myself there.
-+4 weapons for the few +3 immune enemies (which I only used to finish off the Aurumach Rilmani in Watcher's Keep and kill Demiliches, I'll talk about how to handle the Ravager later).
ArmoAccessories:
-Wands, you know them, you love them, you can backstab (or just attack) and then immediately cast them. I barely used them in my playthrough, but they're excellent, of course, especially the wands of paralyzation and spell striking.
-Invisibility stuff. Obvious use.
-Like I said before, Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization (SoA) to get to 9APR.
-Headband of the Devout (ToB): blesses you (-1 thac0 and +1 backstab-effective damage!) and lets you cast Righteous Magic (+3 Strength and MAXED OUT DAMAGE) once per day lasting 1 turn aka 10 rounds!!! GET THIS!! Normally only monks can use it and it's available in Rasaad's quest, along with two other nice items (a cloak that gets you -2 stackable AC and Protection from Magical Energy and Boots with 3x/day Shadow Door).
-Improved Haste (IH) gear:
a) (SoA) Early on you can use the Ring of Gaxx to get 1 round of undispellable (hardly necessary, but I just thought I'd let people know about this if they didn't) IH 3x/day, it technically amounts to 5 rounds, not 3, cause each of the 3 casts lasts for 10 secs (a round is 6 secs), so you might end up doing more than 1 round's worth of attacks (it's hard to tell).
b) (SoA) Bracers of Blinding Strike in the Underdark for 20 secs (a little over 3 rounds) of IH. You can equip it, cast it and equip something else.
c) (SoA) Scrolls of Improved Haste, if you really want to have a longer lasting IH in SoA. There are quite a few and you won't need them in ToB, so use them freely. If you want, you can even waste a scroll of wish for it...
d) (modded SoA or ToB) If you're using the mod (was it Tweaks Anthology?) that lets Cromwell forge the ToB recipes that you can already get in SoA then you can get the Improved Cloak of Protection +2 for those sweet 23 rounds of IH.
e) (ToB) Amulet of Cheetah Speed, also 23 rounds of IH.
-Cloak of Unerring Strikes (SoA) and later Montolio's Cloak (ToB) for extra offhand thac0 and, in Montolio's case also -1 save and AC bonus.
-White Dragon Scale (SoA): best base AC out of any armor in game, available early in SoA, doesn't interfere with thieving skills, lets you cast Cone of Cold, protects from Cold (great for Melissan battle along with the Boots of the North)... The only problem is that it won't let you use the Improved Cloak of Protection +2, so when you get it switch to the Robe of the Apprenti (AC3) until you get another source of long-lasting IH. Or switch it out to cast IH with the cloak before battle and then put it back on.
-Thieves' Hood (SoA): you're a thief, backstabs can hurt a lot in ToB, this makes you immune. Poison immunity is great too, but you got the Ring of Gaxx (which I'll cover with other regen gear) for that.
-Paws of the Cheetah (SoA): along with (improved) haste this lets you run and hide or, better yet, run and place a Time Trap or Spike Trap! Essential!!
-Helm of Balduran: we need that thac0 early on, boys and girls. Some HP and AC is nice too.
-The Visage (SoA, from Dorn's quest): -1 bonus to saves and thac0, protects against crits (I just noticed this lol), can dominate once and has an acid breath attack and a big ol' list of immunities (fear, charm, feeblemind, confusion). What's not to love? It just takes a while to get cause you gotta finish Dorn's quest. It's dope, but after your saves get really low (naturally protecting you against those status as well) you get better stuff.
-Book of Infinite Spells (SoA): Spell Turning! Underrated item and spell. You don't get a lot of spell protections as a non-spellcaster, especially the rechargeable kind, so this is one of the best.
-Vhailor's Helm: more traps! More Assassinations! I actually forgot about using this until the literal final battle lol, but it's great.
-Heart of the Mountain (SoA): available in Spellhold and normally only useable by Shamans, this gets you -2 AC and stacks with enchanted armorings! Excellent before ToB.
-Amulet of the Master Harper (ToB): -3 bonus to AC, even better! Silence immunity and thieving skill bonuses aren't bad either.
-Blessed Bracers (modded SoA Cromwell or ToB): resurrection heals you completely (at least until 2.6 comes! Though the text says it fully heals, so maybe it'll still after 2.6?) and there's some Cure Wounds too if you want. You're better off using a Rod of Resurrection cause it casts faster, but sometimes you just don't feel like using non-rechargeable item charges. Put it on, use it and switch out.
-Nymph Cloak: cheesyyyyy, so cheeeeesy, but it's the kind of cheese I love. I tried not using it too much though, I just used it against a few Rakshasa early on and against Aesgareth's party.
-Regen gear (I'll explain why this is great for thieves next): Ring of Regeneration, Ring of Gaxx (-2 AC and poison/disease immunity is great too ofc), Wong Fei's Ioun Stone (which also nets you some HP and -1 AC).
REGENERATION
"What? Why are you talking about regeneration? What does that have to do with thieves?"
Alchemy = unlimited Potions of Regeneration that stack with all of the regen geaspells (all sources of regen stack INCLUDING DRINKING MULTIPLE POTIONS OF REGENERATION and I just discovered this last part after finishing the game). And Potions of Regeneration heal 2HP/round and last for 3 turns aka 30 rounds!
Although Potions of Regen aren't super rare, they're also not available in ample supply, especially if you don't know where to find them all to begin with. But high level thieves can spam them freely cause they can always get more with Alchemy.
So, if you're not a believe in regeneration like I am, let's explain how good it can be (this is the calculation without abusing potion of regen stacking, so only using one):
-Ring of Regen 1HP/round (aka 1HP/6 seconds)
-Ring of Gaxx 2/round
-Wong Fei's Ioun Stone 1HP/Round
-Potion of Regeneration 2HP/round
=
6HP/round (aka 1HP/sec)
x2 (cause Haste doubles it)
12HP/round (aka 2HP/sec)
That's already pretty damn nice and it "reduces damage" a lot better than AC in ToB where some enemies still tear through -20 AC (plus, you can easily get to the AC cap and still wear all of those items and you've still got a cloak slot to spare and it doesn't force you into using regen weapons)
But if you want some more quick regen as you run around you can use the Cloak of the Sewers' troll form to get you an extra 1HP/sec or 2 with haste, netting you 4HP/sec or 24HP/round which is almost a free Potion of Extra Healing (heals 27HP) every round.
Hexxat makes this even better cause she's got "natural" (it's actually from her amulet) 1HP/round regen.
And, of course, that's all without abusing the Potion of Regeneration stacking that can up as much as you can (though, again, you don't need it and I didn't use it cause I only discovered it now, after finishing the game), as long as you can be bothered to produce a ton of potions with Alchemy and resting (though they're temporary, so as you're drinking more you're wasting the duration of the previous ones, but it CAN get pretty ridiculous quickly and, hey, mages get crazy 8HP/sec WITHOUT HASTE regen from Shapechange -> Greater Wolfwere, so it's fair!).
TRAPS
Regular Traps: they eventually do 3d8+5 missile damage and 20 Poison damage with no save, Slays target if a Save vs. Death with a +4 bonus is failed. Pretty neat, especially if you stack a bunch, but not world-shattering.
Spike Traps: everybody knows how good Spike Traps are, so I won't waste much time on them. They do 20d6 magic damage, so 20-120 (average 70). Magic damage is rarely (and I mean rarely) resisted, which makes them top tier and they can crush even Demogorgon and the final boss easily. I generally get 7 of them so I have the max stackable (was this a thing in vanilla or is this limit SCS-only? I don't remember) whenever I want without simulacrums etc..
Time Traps: bonkers. Amazing. Insanely underrated. Let's do some ToB-stage calculations (this is just the damage I was doing at some point in ToB with IH+Righteous Magic, it's not 100% minmax'd):
Righteous Magic (max damage and 25 STR)+Improved Haste (9APR)+Time Trap (auto-hit) without backstabs/Assassination:
Firetooth +3 -> 29 * 7 attacks (main hand) = 203 damage
Belm +2 -> 28 * 2 attacks (offhand) = 56 damage
=
1 trap spent, 1 round = 259 non-variable (without taking into account potential resistances to pierce/slash) damage. Plus, this is damage you can divide among multiple enemies.
Same thing, but with Assassination:
Firetooth +3 -> 147 * 7 attacks (main hand) = 1029 damage
Belm +2 -> 112 * 2 attacks (offhand) = 224 damage
=
1 trap spent, 1 round = 1253 non-variable (without taking into account potential resistances to pierce/slash) damage. Plus, this is damage you can divide among multiple enemies (eg backstabs for everyone aaaaand fall) and you can still do a lot of damage without Time Traps, it's just that auto-hit is great to make sure every attack hits.
All in all, Time Traps often (not always, ofc) provide more value per use than Spike Traps, especially cause you can divide the damage among several enemies. With a properly geared Assassin, in most fights even without Righteous Magic IH+Assasination+Time Trap = 9 dead enemies in 1 round, so you can start doing this in SoA easily.
And, supposedly, another trap exists... Hmmm... Don't bother, folks.
OTHER HIGH-LEVEL ABILITIES
Greater Evasion: dope! -6 bonus to AC, -3 bonus to saving throws, movement rate +2 and immunity to normal missiles. Lasts 5 rounds. I get 2 just in case, but it's rarely needed tbh. You got access to a lot of AC reducing gear with a thief (this is without Greater Evasion or any buffs and I could still get -2 if I used the Ring of Earth Control and the Cloak of the Dark Moon, but I'd rather keep my regen and thac0 stuff).
Scribe Scrolls: unfortunately pointless. The only half-decent spells you can easily get from other items (wands, White Dragon Scale etc.). Do not invest!
Avoid Death: -5 bonus to Save vs. Death, immunity to instant death effects, and +20 Hit Points. Lasts 5 rounds. It's aight. I get 2 later in the game just in case, but I rarely use it (good against Planetars so you don't get vorpal'd, would be good against Balors' vorpal effect too, but you can just Assassinate them).
THE GREAT LIST OF BACKSTAB-IMMUNE ENEMIES! OH, THE DESPAIR!
"Thieves are useless, there are too many backstab immune enemies!". Is that really the case? I mean, I know it's subjective (what you think are "too many", I mean), but too me the list is pretty short. The only thing that bothers me is ToB bosses being immune to it, but you can still handily deal with them as I'll show later. I think people think a lot of enemies are immune to backstab just cause they see past invisibility (like Demons do), but Assassination still works on them. So... Here's the list:
SoA/ToB backstab-immune enemies:
General enemy types:
-Barbarians (fun fact: there are almost no Barbarians in SoA/ToB and the majority of them are specific measly Orcs/Orogs/Minotaurs)
-Beholders (all types) <- Trap, even regular traps do it most of the time.
-Demiliches (NOT Liches in general) <- Use Spell Immunity from a scroll or Protection from Undead if you're low level.
-Devas/Planetars <-You should kill mage/clerics before they can summon them, but if you can't just Time Trap or Spike Trap.
-Dragons <- Time Trap handles them easily or just use a scroll of disintegration.
-Golems
-Slimes/Oozes
-A lot of mists/wraiths (I can't tell whether it's all of them or not, so I listed them below)
Specific enemies:
-3 out of the 6 enemies in the Heart Key fight in Watcher's Keep Final Seal level (The Huntress, the Hive Mother and Ameralis are immune, so Nalmissra, Xei Win Toh and even Y'Tossi are vulnerable)
-Aesgareth and his party
-Bone fiends (Bone Golem-looking demons)
-Specific demons in fight 2-5 of the Black Pits II (for some reason... Even the Lesser Demon Lord in the Underdark is vulnerable, so why make these ones invulnerable?)
-Garock/Rock (the two minotaurs at the Machine of Lum level of Watcher's Keep)
-Guardian spirit (don't even remember who this is)
-Kiser (dude causing some mischief in Saradush)
-Liches, only two of them (Azamantes, the Spike Trap-able, along with his flaming skulls and Vongoethe in Amkethran)
-Mists/Wraiths: Mist/Swamp/Wandering Horrors, Vampiric Wraiths/Mists, Spellhaunts, Slave Wraiths and Demon Wraith (Watcher's Keep maze level)
-Velithuu (the ice salamander-looking demons in the Watcher's Keep Maze level)
Bosses (ie enemies you have to fight finish the game, plus Demogorgon cause he's the "boss" of Watcher's Keep):
-The Bhaalspawns (Balthazar, Gromnir, Illasera, Sendai, Yaga-Shura and his Lieutenants)
-Demogorgon
-Melissan
-Nyalee (technically a boss lol)
-Ravager and its Bone Blades
Everything else can be backstabbed! Including:
-Bodhi
-Irenicus
-The Slayer
-Pretty much every Demon (even the Lesser Demon Lord in the Underdark)
-Almost every Lich (even Kangaxx and Shangalar)
-Greater Werewolves/Wolfweres
-Mind Flayers (even their Master Brain)
-The Watcher's Keep statues
-Rakshasa
-Fire Giants
-Drow and so on (what else worries people?)
If they see past invisibility, just pop that assassination, brother!
And for those that can't be backstabbed we always have Time Traps! 9APR of auto-hit max damage is no joke. And takes us to...
ENEMIES IMMUNE TO TIME TRAP/STOP
They are just a few:
-Demogorgon
-Melissan
-Ravager
-Abazigal
-Aurumach/Ferrumach Rilmani
-Balthazar (only while in Lunar Stance)
-Guardian Spirit (who???)
Not that many and, really, the only ones who are a big deal in the non-tactical challenge SCS Insane game are Melissan and Ravager (which I'll cover later). Aurumach is also immune to +3 weapons and under, but he's too squishy to be a bother and can partially be hurt by normal traps (he's immune to magical damage, so Spike Traps don't work and the poison part of normal traps also doesn't work).
ENEMIES THAT REQUIRE +4 WEAPONS
Also not too many:
Ravager
Aurumach Rilmani <- mentioned it before, too squishy to be a bother.
Fallen Solar (NOT Fallen Planetar, it's the one from the Melissan battle) <- lure and 2-3 spike traps handles it
Demiliches <- usual cheese
Lesser Demon Lord <- vulnerable to Time Trap and backstabs
SO HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THEM TOB BOSSES?
Demogorgon: Spike Traps. Bye.
Yaga-Shura: Time Trap, hit him. Then deal with Lieutenants until you find him and then Time Trap him again.
Sendai: actually one of the most annoying fights in the game for single class solo thieves, because there are sooooo many enemies to handle it's a big bother. The important part is to Spike Trap her clones that cast magic before they spawn and to put a Time Trap at the left of the arena before killing that last clone (who's pretty weak, thankfully, so you can take your time to set things up), that way the reinforcements will trigger the Time Trap along with the real Sendai spawning and you can just hit her until she dies and she can't do anything. Remember that you have a million different sources of Improved Haste at this point, so you can re-buff. EDIT: Read about the Staff of the Magi on the weapons section. I fucked up and didn't have it cause I forgot to get it before moving on to ToB.
Abazigal: pre-fight 1 Time Trap to kill his human form in 1 round, 6 Spike Traps somewhere else -> Dragon (Time Trap immune), get him to trigger the 6 Spike Traps, then run and Spike Trap one or two times more. Dead. In vanilla it would be way easier cause dragons don't get the x3 SCS buff to HP.
Balthazar: one Time Trap. Done. Yeaaaah, he's too easy for pretty much every party, I should re-install the improved version of his fight at least.
Ravager: Time Trap AND backstab immunity! What a meanie! Besides the usual buffs (improved haste+righteous magic) and prioritizing thac0 boosting equipment, I used Black Blade of Disaster + 3 scrolls of Protection from Magical Weapons + 1 of Absolute Immunity. Harder to think of what to do than to actually do it. You gotta get a little lucky so that PfMW doesn't run out as he hits you and does the stun (sleep?) stuff on you or that you don't get dispelled too soon. Not too bad once you know what to do.
Melissan: again Time Trap and backstab immunity. The first phase is the whole fight, pretty much. Usual buffs (improved haste+righteous magic) + BBD + Spell Immunity: Abjuration (to prevent dispel) can end it fast before it gets outta control. After that it's just a matter of abusing Spike Trap (4 traps for each phase) by using Simulacrums (scrolls or Vhailor's), Project Images and/or Rest Wishes (stop hoarding scrolls, it's the final fight!).
RANDOM STATS
Total scrolls I used in the whole playthrough:
-3 Disintegrations for dragons (Firkraag/Thaxll'ssillyia/Saladrex). I coulda Time Trapped and hit them for a few times but this is easier.
-2 Black Blades of Disaster (Ravager + Melissan's first phase).
-2 Simulacrums (Melissan trap shennanigans).
-3 Protection from Magical Weapons (Ravager).
-1 Absolute Immunity, which coulda been another PfMW (Ravager).
-1 Protection from Undead (to kill Kangaxx's Demilich form early on).
Basically, feel free to use more scrolls than I did, cause you rarely need them.
Wands I used:
-1 charge of a wand of spellstriking to Breach Melissan at the start of her first phase.
-3 charges of a wand of cloudkill on random enemies after getting UAI, then I forgot about it.
Coulda used a lot more wands (especially spellstriking, but with regen and stuff I just waited til PfMWs ran out on some mages and so on), but I was too busy having fun with Time Trap Assassinations trying to kill as many enemies before they fell to the ground.
How many times I used the super cheesy Nymph Cloak that I love but avoided using to focus on thief-related strats:
-A few times against Rakshasa very early in the game (Watcher's Keep rakshasa can destroy a good deal of the second level on its own).
-Once to charm the mage in the Aesgareth fight very early in the game to rush the +1 STR (Machine of Lum) and +2 DEX (Lum + Deck of Many Things).
FINAL VERDICT
Tons of fun. It's actually been a while since I last bothered to really finish Throne of Bhaal all the way through, but I was having so much fun with my Assassin that I did it. And it's boooooooooooooooooooooooooooonkers to think that some people think they're underpowered. Bonkers! They're almost fightemage/thieves on their own. And even if you don't like positioning for backstabs... You barely need it. I pretty much only did that before I got Assassination (and even then I didn't need to rely on it too much cause I already had 8APR and so on), afterwards it's Assassination-a-palooza. Too bad you only get 1 so you have to rest a bunch though, but you can still do plenty of damage with just Time Traps if you don't wanna abuse resting.
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is it good to stop slot machines video

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Casino Slot Machine Manipulation Is Totally Possible - YouTube

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is it good to stop slot machines

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