So, I accidentally took a swing at Brax while on the third floor, trying to sell him a thing I didn't have inventory space for. In proper "Oh crap" fashion, I ran for the hills and healed up. The problem is, upon returning to floor three, there are collectors everywhere, and I can't seem to kill 'em before they space more of themselves. Is there anything I can do about this situation, or have I screwed myself eternally? Also, is Brax going to hate me forever on the other floors now? (My build is unarmed with viking magic, throwing, and some roguey skills, if that is of any importance)
Other Floors = no, Third Floor = forever. Actually, ONLY the brax you pissed off will hate you.. the others actually won't aggro you.. but the collectors.. *cough*.
Survive? Maybe. Get to the stairs? Terribly questionable! Also my stash in on the first floor =[ I'll have a go at it one of these days. Edit: Nope! Got caught between a big ole group of three djinn hiding around a corner in sight of the stairs and like 10 collectors. Lasted a whole round after failing to knockback a Djinn. Ah well. Lesson learned.
Do the collectors ever stop spawning? I know I killed somewhere around 30 before I reloaded. Never ending free exp seems abusable!
Nope, they don't stop. I spent nearly 20 minutes just fireballing them within sight of a spawn location.
I don't understand what the point of Burglary LVL 5 is when Brax just catches you and the dread collectors infinitely spawn until you die.
I guess, once you're done with that level, you can steal whatever you found interesting and move on Burned bridges and whatnot
It does seem silly that there are more or less three options left for your character after stealing something from Brax: 1: Die. - This seems some degree of bad. 2: Infinite experience. - This does not seem like a punishment. 3: Run away from Brax and Collectors, never to return to that level. (This, actually, is fairly balanced.) Perhaps what might balance this out better would be to allow any debt collector who hits you, to have a high chance to steal your items, including any item you had equipped, and some gold. If they manage to steal all the items that you stole from Brax back, they would then take a chunk of your gold as a punishment, and all stop spawning and disappear in a cloud of smoke, keeping any item they stole from you and removing them from the game. This would keep there from being an infinite amount of experience, and would reduce the 'reward' for stealing and then hanging around. Sure you can drop all your gear somewhere else (except for your gold) but that would make it hard to fight the collectors. And you wouldnt want to risk losing your gear, gold, or character just to fight them for experience. EDIT: Or simply make them not give experience.
" Perhaps what might balance this out better would be to allow any debt collector who hits you, to have a high chance to steal your items, including any item you had equipped, and some gold" Er, that would make them about a googolplex (10 x a googol zeros, a number that can't be written out due to a lack of available atoms in the universe, not joking at all either.) times more powerful and dangerous then they already are. How about they can steal the items you stole back, and then steal money as another punishment, but to be able to rob you blind, yeah, that would be overpowered.
To be fair to the idea, they would only rob you for as long as you let them attack you, and once they got their loot back, they would leave, thus letting you finish playing the level you were on and capping the issue with endless experience gain, but still leaving both stealing and some attempted xp farming to be a viable tactic if the player wishes. Alternatively, simply keeping the current behavior of endless spawning and making them not drop gold or XP to reward the player above and beyond his original theft would be more simple.
You're asking me to believe them being able to steal everything you have is okay? That would be such a broken ability, it's not even funny. Have them stop giving you experience, much better. Mind you, I never stole items, because I have no reason too. But still, I'm sorry, but that's not a balanced thing at all to do. Sorry, but no game developer is that insane.
Removing the experience for killing them is the more elegant solution to the problem, since its so simple. I fully agree. (Ive never killed one, but was assuming they give experience from what i've read.) But what i was attempting to do is offer is an alternative to what pretty much amounts to permanently run away from that level if you can, die, or gain infinite experience until you are bored if you are strong enough to stand toe to toe with them. Any character who was too weak to fight them would probably be killed by them anyway, so i was offering an idea that would give that character a higher chance to survive the collectors, and continue playing, while also giving players the option to fight if they wanted, but it would be a risky and or costly thing to do if they wanted the experience.
@Ratha Well, to be fair, you didn't really give a fair option, because robbing you blind is not fine, sorry. I will not change my opinion on that, ever. However, yes, not making them give experience, would be good. They're already annoying enough, having them steal all your stuff and never give it back wouldn't even make sense. The game should punish you for stealing, but not in a way, that makes trying to kill the Casino guards in ADOM look easy, after being Doomed and Cursed by killing the shopkeeper, as a wizard, in melee with a dagger that misses 1 out of every 3 hits And there's a few gorgons on the floor.
@DavidB1111 - I totally agree that its a very unlikely suggestion. The more complex a solution to a problem needs to be, the less likely it will be to be the right solution. I think you might be missing why i suggested them stealing stuff. Let me try to explain why i suggested it a bit better. On most characters who wouldnt be able to fight them one-on-one, chances are that character would simply die, which is equivalent to losing all your stuff anyway. I was suggesting theft of your items as a potential alternative to death. I for one would rather have a robbed character, than a dead one. That would be more interesting to me. On most characters who would be able to fight them one-on-one, chances are those characters would be powerful enough to kill hoards of them. In that scenario the theft mechanism is supposed to work as a deterrent for that kind of behavior. You want to grind XP? Well you have to do it after stashing your good gear so it dosnt get stolen, and its going to cost you potions and money. But i concede that the most probable solution to the exploit is simply to not give experience, and to force the player never to return to that floor again. If they survived long enough to run away. I was just trying to offer a middle ground solution with the suggestion. Something other than run away or die (or exploit for experience.
On the original point: Somehow, when I was jacking around, I managed to kill off Brax and his collectors and they completely stopped spawning. I only fought brax and the collectors in his shop. I shot a Bolt of Mass Destruction at him to initiate combat, then laid down a squid bolt and proceeded to cast Obvious Fireball (pre-nerf, if it matters) and managed to kill them all easily, and then I noticed they stopped coming, I ran around for a while and they still never came back. Was surprised. I've never been able to reproduce it, granted I haven't tried too hard.
