Right now there isn't much emphasis on element types. I've easily dealt with the 'hell/fire' level with pure Promethean magic and don't particularly care what damage types my weapon deals, just how big the number is. Would Dredmor benefit from a greater emphasis on the various damage types? It doesn't have to go as far as pure rock, paper, scissors but it might be nice to have some enemies have greater resistances (or even weaknesses?) to certain types.
I agree. I also didn't look closely enough at the topic list when I posted my own thread "Monster resistances?".
I kinda don't like how the title calls it rock paper scissors, but I agree on the lack of emphasis on the element types. http://www.dredmorwiki.com/wiki/Damage At the bottom of the page, in the Guide section, there's a brief appraisal of how effective the 16 damage types are against all monsters' resistances in general. http://www.dredmorwiki.com/wiki/Monsters A pretty good list of all monsters' damage types and resistances. In particular, you can see Lord Dredmor has 20 toxic, 20 putrefying, 20 asphyxiative resistances. However, even after looking at those numbers, I still feels that there doesn't seem to have enough of an emphasis on elements as to really make a difference in choosing one element over another. In my experience, the only thing I've done element-wise was to switch on the Toque of Kanada (6 hyperborean resistance) when fighting against golems (all golems do 6 hyperborean damage) on the early levels I had to trade blows with them in melee. Afterwards, as my character became strong enough to one- or two-shot everything, all I cared was which sword's total damage added up to the highest number, without regard to the damage types, really. I might have cared more if the monsters' actual damage types and resistances are displayed in game for me to micromanage, but even then I don't know if it would be really worth it. Instead, what I'd like to see to make elements more important would be much more unforgiving conditions such as "monster X can ONLY be damaged by voltaic damage" (What, you don't have voltaic damage? Better run then!); or "on this map, all aethereal damage is TRIPLED and get 50% stun chance"; and other nasty things like that. But such drastic game changers tied to elements would artificially make certain skills/items/monsters imbalanced, so let's say those elemental favorabilities are randomly generated each time. Anyway, I bet lots of people hate that idea. :/
I agree that rock paper scissors shouldn't have been mentioned. Usually elemental trinities don't work out well in practice. I do agree that enemy resists should mean more though, at least on Going Rogue.
LavaStar, Making the monster only vulnerable to a single damage type would probably make the game unnecessarily difficult for melee characters, who typically have fewer damage types at their disposal than mages. Resistance to slashing and crushing should be less common than resistance to "magic" damage types.
Making the game unnecessarily difficult is precisely the point! I'm all for making the game so ridiculously hard such that sometimes you just completely run out of options and you just die. But that kind of stuff should probably be limited to a Super-rogue mode for troubled masochists such as myself.
Mages do not have access to lots of damage types either, seeing as many trees provide only a single damage type: they'll need to take at least two trees for primary damage if they want to access about as many damage types as Warriors do.
