Sharpshooter
Joined: 20 August 2006
Posts: 24
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31 October 2006 07:27 (UK time)
I tried what you said about the evil poison bottle, and I did die instantly. I guess I failed to notice it the previous times because I tend to make sure I have full health before attacking the Ice Dragon's guardians, and since I always use an armor suit at this point (I make the enemies follow me, then hide behind Sha'morad and let him do most of the work), the suit takes damage rather than me (and then I heal the suit with the Healing Hands).
I did find the Giant secret level; in fact, I mentioned it in a previous post. I especially liked the fact that there are two entrances : the wizards and archers will likely have an easier time using the west entrance (with the lilypad) whereas a knight should probably use the volcano entrance so he doesn't get blown up by the two Giants near the western entrance. Speaking of which, the Gold Wand in the secret level is fun to use but currently not all that useful - the projectiles are so fast that they go through walls and monsters, so it's hard to it anything with it except for Hobgoblins and Flying Serpents.
I tried crossing the moat with the lilypad, but there are faster ways across, so it's not all that useful and by the time you need to attack the northern castle you'll have the Spicklebeast anyway. I do agree that summoning a lilypad can be useful if you get stranded on an island (that happened to me once or twice - Sharks and Big Fishes blew up my skiff) or if you want to get across a river quickly, but most of the time I just use the Frigate.
About the secrets, it would seem that the Giant level is not the only secret (though it seems to be the only major one). I also found the evil turnip (very funny  ) and some kind of flying boat trick. I also fought the Ballista on the island in Lake Mud with my Frigate (picking the God Mode Shades helped a lot, I don't think I'd have survived otherwise). I also found the Creeper suit in the northern castle. I found it be to be pretty useful against Ghosts.
About the Spickle Blast - I did notice that it was XP-based. In fact, the game says so. I'm not very good when it comes to scripting, but isn't the Spickle Bomb XP-based too?
Also, I've carefully thought about the fact that casting a Spickle Blast tells you about where the Clockman currently is : it may not be that irrelevant. If that info was given by the Spickle Bomb, it would be 'too late', whereas as it is, you can cast a Spickle Blast before using the bomb and reduce the chance of blowing yourself up.
About the gameplay balance : you did very well, no doubt. Ravagers of Time has a great gameplay, and I was surprised by the tremendous power most enemies have when I first played the game. I was amazed at the number of monsters who can kill the player in one hit. With Meteor I was used to the fact that powerful enemies usually have lots of hit points and can be nearly unkillable if the player doesn't have some kind of über weapon, but that isn't the case in RoT (Fliars come to mind...). Fighting the three Steel Beasts is simply awesome, I was amazed when I first found the trick to beat them as a Knight (dodge, dodge, get under them, attack, repeat). The game is truly different from Meteor, Rot does have some shooting parts but it's really more of a RPG/strategy/action/adventure game. It makes you think a lot. Speaking of which, I tend to clear the southern part of the desert quite early in the game, shortly after beating the Giant Toad of Doom. The enemies really aren't that difficult - the Fliars tend to die very quickly (one hit from any good weapon will kill them). The Stone Creeper is somewhat tough, but it's all a matter of dodging, healing, and attacking while it's 'recharging'.
So you are planning on releasing something soon? Does it have anything to do with RoT or is it something else? Or is it a surprise? 
I'm always glad to hear you're going to release something, anyway. Even the extremely buggy Meteor : Afghanistan singleplayer campaign had some very neat gameplay ideas and can be very fun to play with a few tweaks.
EDIT : Aleksanteri : Those Giants are tough, aren't they? 
My strategy as a wizard and archer is to let them get stuck into walls - they're so clumsy that it's actually not that hard. When they're stuck, they'll either stop attacking or start damaging themselves, and you can destroy them without too much trouble. As a knight, I simply use the Sword of Fire : I dodge three times, attack with the Sword of Fire, get away, dodge three times, and finish them off (the Giants pause to recharge every three attacks). By the way, another thing that impressed me was how the Giant suit was balanced. Since Giants can usually kill the player in one hit (except for high-level knights), I thought that the suit was going to be extremely powerful, and it really isn't. It doesn't do much damage and you need to recharge every three hits, so there are much better ways of inflicting damage; because the one thing that actually makes the Giant suit useful is the fact that it has a lot of HP (and also the fact that it's not too slow) : its main purpose is to take damage, not to inflict it (with a few exceptions : I did enjoy running over some monsters with it), which makes it useful for scouting. The Ballista armor suit is quite the opposite : it does lots of damage, but has a slow reloading rate, moves slowly, and only has half the HP of the Giant suit.
EDIT 2 : About the characters being equal... I would say you also did well. You have to adjust your strategy depending on which character you play, and some enemies are indeed tougher depending, again, on which character you play.
The Wizard isn't actually all that powerful at first, and has a pretty good chance of blowing himself up with the Fire Wand. He has pretty low HP throughout the game, has no really good melee attacks (the Ooze wand doesn't really count) at first, needs to wait until Level 4 before he can use the Fire Wand... However, the Ice Wand has bouncing projectiles, the 'Ooze Wand Level 6' fires in all directions, and the (understandably expensive) White Wands are simply the most powerful weapons in the game (unless you count the Archer's Spickle Bomb as a weapon). The wizard's abilities are pretty good too, but they're also expensive, and using "disappear" may make enemies run away, which isn't always good (Vast Ghost of Gloom...)
The Knight has lots of HP, his melee attacks are quite powerful, especially the Fire Sword, so he can do damage very quickly. However, his only half-powerful ranged weapons are the Lightning Spears, which he only gets at Level 6, and they aren't all that powerful. His abilities are great - invulnerability rocks and doesn't seem to be *too* unbalancing, he can still get killed by powerful monsters when the effect wears off. Horse summoning is good too; in fact, I recently found out that riding a horse can help when fighting the overpowered Steel Beast.
The Archer is not too bad at the beginning of the game, but not too great either. All of his attacks can be used in melee, with the exception of the Fire Crossbow. The Fire Crossbow does loads of damage, but the recharging rate is slow. I found that as an Archer, defeating Steel Beasts can be much harder. The Archer has no super powers. He doesn't have any true super weapons/abilities like the white wands or the knight's invulnerability (using a Spickle Blast does make you invulnerable for an extremely short time, though, and that can help), but he does have the Spickle Blasts and the risky spickle bomb (I think the Spickle Bomb is the most powerful attack in the whole game, but it's no 'super' weapon due to the fact that you need perfect timing), and he is the only one who can get the ballista. In a way, he's both the weakest and the most powerful character - he has really bad weaknesses, and really good advantages.
Edited: 31 October 2006 10:01
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