09-19-2006, 05:04 AM
Hell is virtually the same every level, every game. You'll run into two types of melee mummy's (one with knight attack type, the other with drake attack type), and one blood star shooting type. There's gargoyle one-hit killers (named Death's touch) with only 1 hp each. Then there are the boar class melee. I think also some blood star shooting bats. MAYBE one fire-shooter, can't quite recall. Occasionally you get some charging Leoric-looking knights that are pretty brawny. There are also fat scythe-weilding enemies which remind me of a cross between an overloard and balrog as far as looks go. They have knight AI, but are slower and pretty easy.
The problem is there seems like such little variety. Mummy's mummy's mummys. The ranged is probably 90% magic attack: blood stars. It seems like everything is undead, except possibly the ranged bat attackers and the boars. The gargoyles may not be, but with 1 hp it wouldn't even matter. I don't think any enemy has a balrog attack or attacks and retreats. Snooze. The magic damage IS substantial, even when it seems you have pretty high resistances, plus it can still stun you. It does force you to be a little wiser with ranged. 16 has decent variety but it IS the same every game, like the original. There are two unique skeleton archer packs (shooting blood stars, suprise suprise). Their AI is not well coordinated, as the minions want to follow, but the bosses hold their ground (thus keeping their minions within range). Since 16 has a lot of open area these packs are often right in the middle of an area. What happens is the once the boss is activated, he will not deactivate, and he will continue to shoot at you with a Line of Sight. The minions will not fire once you are a certain distance away. For my thief, what ends up happening is I would shoot arrows in the general direction that the bosses lone blood stars were coming from, probably hitting some unknown minions for sure. Not being able to see the pack, I just kept it up until the boss was dead then would move in to take care of the minions. Oh yeah, and when the boss hits you, it WILL stun, so it just because a boring tit-for-tat-happy-feet-dance-shoot-across-the-level-blindly-till-one-of-us-dies "tactic".
Combine that with tons of Uber-items, and it is much more of a hack-n-slash than D1. In fact, it seems to be heavily influenced by D2. There's new item mods for "Increase magic find" and "Increased experience gained". There might also be one for more gold IIRC. Additionally, on levels 1 and 16, EVERY monster drops a magical item. Sixteen gets so bad that if you don't start sorting through the items half way through, you will reach the item drop limit and miss out on some boss drops. Then it is a real chore to truck items to town for ID. To make it more bearable, there is a skill that will show you the identified attributes on the ground (but it isn't actually ID'd), so you at least only have to drag back the best items for use or money. If you really want to bog yourself down, there is a spell (Ransack) that will make monsters drop 2 items eash. For normal monster it just means they just get two normal drops, meaning that you're most likely to get gold or nothing, so two items will probably not drop, BUT two could. For bosses you get twice the good booty.
I found that with all the new affixes, it was quite time intensive on 16 trying to remember/figure out what the good affixes are. For example, obsidian/zodiac is equivalent to something like warding/universe, but with virtually every affix changed you really have to pay attention to the items so you know what to bring to town.
As far as town is concerned, I think it is terrible. You can run, but not like you can run in Hellfire. You pause for a split second every tile, so initially it is ackward, but you will get used to it. The NPC's have borrowed graphics from other games, which really aren't bad, just different. The voices aren't quite diabloesque though. Worst of all, however, is the town layout. There is so much crap crowed in it is difficult to navigate. MANY places have 1x1 through high traffic areas. There are alternate routes, but usually around obstcales like homes. For examples, "Pepins" new home is moddified and surrounded by a wall with 2 tiles clearance max between the house and wall. An NPC obstructs one whole side; it is even worse when players are in town and talking to that NPC. To get to the crack in hell, you have to go completely around the wall one way, around the wall PLUS another wall the other way, or squeeze yourself around and behind the house. The are so many unnecessary walls and rocks, trees and general obstacles it is terrible. There is actually a "maze" to get the the wirt-like character. It is just so completely congested it is agonizing. Finally, TP placement is very bad. The 4 TP spawns are no longer close together and are roughly located at the four corners of the town square. When you are visiting town vendors, you almost have to dodge them to avoid accidentily clicking on them. There is even a bigger problem with this. There are level restrictions to entering TP's so often with a lower level character, if you try to enter a TP, it will automatically move your character one sqaure south and give you a "can not enter" message. The problem is that this doesn't just happen when you step on the actual tile with the TP, but even when you just get near. The effect it has is when you get 2-3 tiles within range, your character is kicked back. Now, with TP placement being as it is - right the in the middle of everything in town - they make this barrier right through town that you can't cross because "you can't enter this TP yet" - even though you were clicking on the NPC across the way. Town is terrible.
By far, the worst and really the most suprising thing about it is how much like b.net it is. Just because people are playing legit (which actually not all are), it makes no difference. Probably the worst thing about b.net is how easy it is to dupe elite gear and twink new players. Well, so many items are so common in REX that even without duping it is practially the same effect. IMO, the "legit" of b.net would be the players that don't twink - the rest are no different than standard b.net hackers. Not to mention it is hard to find players that won't PK you for no reason. My first night on, someone gave my thief [rogue] a unique bow that added 100 to damage with swiftness and a helm that added 50 to damage. Immediately I could stun kill anything in Hell without effort. At level 24 my thief was doing 200-250 swifted damage. I moved from normal/hell to nightmare/hell, and noticed almost no difference. I did have to be careful with the magic ranged as they would stun and do a lot of damage for where I was at. My damage was still so much that I could decimate large mobs before melee enemies had any chance to get to me. Combined with good wall and corner tactics, nothing could touch me. I can't imagine what another 20 levels and complete equipment will do.
I have not been to hell difficulty yet.
Well, that's it for now off the top of my head.
The problem is there seems like such little variety. Mummy's mummy's mummys. The ranged is probably 90% magic attack: blood stars. It seems like everything is undead, except possibly the ranged bat attackers and the boars. The gargoyles may not be, but with 1 hp it wouldn't even matter. I don't think any enemy has a balrog attack or attacks and retreats. Snooze. The magic damage IS substantial, even when it seems you have pretty high resistances, plus it can still stun you. It does force you to be a little wiser with ranged. 16 has decent variety but it IS the same every game, like the original. There are two unique skeleton archer packs (shooting blood stars, suprise suprise). Their AI is not well coordinated, as the minions want to follow, but the bosses hold their ground (thus keeping their minions within range). Since 16 has a lot of open area these packs are often right in the middle of an area. What happens is the once the boss is activated, he will not deactivate, and he will continue to shoot at you with a Line of Sight. The minions will not fire once you are a certain distance away. For my thief, what ends up happening is I would shoot arrows in the general direction that the bosses lone blood stars were coming from, probably hitting some unknown minions for sure. Not being able to see the pack, I just kept it up until the boss was dead then would move in to take care of the minions. Oh yeah, and when the boss hits you, it WILL stun, so it just because a boring tit-for-tat-happy-feet-dance-shoot-across-the-level-blindly-till-one-of-us-dies "tactic".
Combine that with tons of Uber-items, and it is much more of a hack-n-slash than D1. In fact, it seems to be heavily influenced by D2. There's new item mods for "Increase magic find" and "Increased experience gained". There might also be one for more gold IIRC. Additionally, on levels 1 and 16, EVERY monster drops a magical item. Sixteen gets so bad that if you don't start sorting through the items half way through, you will reach the item drop limit and miss out on some boss drops. Then it is a real chore to truck items to town for ID. To make it more bearable, there is a skill that will show you the identified attributes on the ground (but it isn't actually ID'd), so you at least only have to drag back the best items for use or money. If you really want to bog yourself down, there is a spell (Ransack) that will make monsters drop 2 items eash. For normal monster it just means they just get two normal drops, meaning that you're most likely to get gold or nothing, so two items will probably not drop, BUT two could. For bosses you get twice the good booty.
I found that with all the new affixes, it was quite time intensive on 16 trying to remember/figure out what the good affixes are. For example, obsidian/zodiac is equivalent to something like warding/universe, but with virtually every affix changed you really have to pay attention to the items so you know what to bring to town.
As far as town is concerned, I think it is terrible. You can run, but not like you can run in Hellfire. You pause for a split second every tile, so initially it is ackward, but you will get used to it. The NPC's have borrowed graphics from other games, which really aren't bad, just different. The voices aren't quite diabloesque though. Worst of all, however, is the town layout. There is so much crap crowed in it is difficult to navigate. MANY places have 1x1 through high traffic areas. There are alternate routes, but usually around obstcales like homes. For examples, "Pepins" new home is moddified and surrounded by a wall with 2 tiles clearance max between the house and wall. An NPC obstructs one whole side; it is even worse when players are in town and talking to that NPC. To get to the crack in hell, you have to go completely around the wall one way, around the wall PLUS another wall the other way, or squeeze yourself around and behind the house. The are so many unnecessary walls and rocks, trees and general obstacles it is terrible. There is actually a "maze" to get the the wirt-like character. It is just so completely congested it is agonizing. Finally, TP placement is very bad. The 4 TP spawns are no longer close together and are roughly located at the four corners of the town square. When you are visiting town vendors, you almost have to dodge them to avoid accidentily clicking on them. There is even a bigger problem with this. There are level restrictions to entering TP's so often with a lower level character, if you try to enter a TP, it will automatically move your character one sqaure south and give you a "can not enter" message. The problem is that this doesn't just happen when you step on the actual tile with the TP, but even when you just get near. The effect it has is when you get 2-3 tiles within range, your character is kicked back. Now, with TP placement being as it is - right the in the middle of everything in town - they make this barrier right through town that you can't cross because "you can't enter this TP yet" - even though you were clicking on the NPC across the way. Town is terrible.
By far, the worst and really the most suprising thing about it is how much like b.net it is. Just because people are playing legit (which actually not all are), it makes no difference. Probably the worst thing about b.net is how easy it is to dupe elite gear and twink new players. Well, so many items are so common in REX that even without duping it is practially the same effect. IMO, the "legit" of b.net would be the players that don't twink - the rest are no different than standard b.net hackers. Not to mention it is hard to find players that won't PK you for no reason. My first night on, someone gave my thief [rogue] a unique bow that added 100 to damage with swiftness and a helm that added 50 to damage. Immediately I could stun kill anything in Hell without effort. At level 24 my thief was doing 200-250 swifted damage. I moved from normal/hell to nightmare/hell, and noticed almost no difference. I did have to be careful with the magic ranged as they would stun and do a lot of damage for where I was at. My damage was still so much that I could decimate large mobs before melee enemies had any chance to get to me. Combined with good wall and corner tactics, nothing could touch me. I can't imagine what another 20 levels and complete equipment will do.
I have not been to hell difficulty yet.
Well, that's it for now off the top of my head.