Posted by Proud Blade(VIP) on July 5, 2000 at 09:47:28:
In Reply to: To be fair...(not a flame, more a cry for help) posted by Imbrogno on July 5, 2000 at 09:19:30:
As far as frightful fiend goes, I can think of two things to do that help quite a bit. One is not available to many characters, but the other is avaialble to anyone above about level 20. How do I know these amazing things? Ungodly logical skills? Nope. Backrubs for Nepenthe? Nope. I played a bard. I explored. I lored. I found a number of really useful low-level items, one of which had 'anti-fiend' written all over it. Ingvar never died to a fiend either, and fought several 45+ bards in his time. The number one easy way to figure out how to beat something: Use it, or group with someone and tell them to use it. I know how players beat Mr. Fiend. One way is standing next to a healer, spamming 'heal heal' with as many resistances as they could eat/zap/read/call/sing. It worked for several storm giants who I had sung up. They were poorer, and quite beat up in the process, but they were alive. Either of the two other things I know of would have made it a cake walk, I think, for them. A smaller hint that most people have caught on to: Keep the hell away from the bard once you're fiended. Once I had fiend perfected, if I found you while you were still fighting it, your chances of dying were much, much higher, even if all I did was use nightmare to keep you away from a healer, or sleep the Dawnie healers as they gated in. Reverse hint for bard: Learn people's recall points. You can then force them to make an ugly decision: both bard and temple healer, or neither. And don't forget to use the less flashy songs. > ...and both you and Nepenthe are guilty of this, what is obviously apparent to you, as a coder, is not always as obviously apparent to me or any other non-coder. > You say there are simple ways to thwart the frightful fiend, the nightgaunt, clairvoyance(which I've never had a problem with), and so on, and I believe you, but a lot of times you coders use some pretty twisted logic when thinking up these "simple ways", or at least many people feel you do. > This is why people come up with some silly "tactics" to use against things such as the nightgaunt. Hold a torch and wave it wildly they said. Obviously that's not going to work, but when twisted logic is used to code something, twisted logic is used to decipher it. > Then to throw more water on the grease fire imms come here and swear up and down that they can't understand why people die to things like the frightful fiend. Nepenthe said once that he has never had a character die to frightful fiend(must be nice). This makes us normal folk think that there must be some elite secret, or the more paranoid and anti-imm among us think that it must be some sort of immortal conspiracy or imm cheating. I can tell you that I tried damn near everything with Imbrogno to beat the damn things short of seeing if they had an aversion to fart socials, and the only thing I found to be effective was standing at the healer spamming "heal heal" and hoping I could last long enough for When You Don't See Me to wear off. Nepenthe says there are other ways and I'll admit that I'm dumbfounded. All I can imagine is that there must be some items out there that do some crazy shit. > Sooner or later people get tired of it, like I have on occassion, and just start playing race/class combos that can easily defeat these things. I remember when frightful fiend came out I started playing races with more intelligence and stopped playing storm giants(my favorite race) because I was tired of every bard and his brother killing me with frightful fiend. Realistically though, people can't just always play elves(fiend-bane), and can't spend all 500 hours of their life underwater, and can't always just word when they see a person coming(damn entropy). > I guess the moral of the story is, don't assume that just because something is obvious to you, that it must also be obvious to anybody with an IQ over 85 or that because somebody can't not(ooh double negative, think a moment on it) die to something like frightful fiend or nightgaunt that they must be morons that can't play the game for shit. > Imbrogno, who is going to start removing all of his glowing gear when he's alone at night in hopes that clairvoyancing conjurers can't see in the dark. *laugh*