Now for the last thing that I researched during this week, and also the most important one! The Siamese! You know, the units that were literally half and half units, two units in one, sharing passives.
"Incredible price! It's 2x1 in units! 2x1! Pick two units, and I will turn them into only one! It's the best discount ever, pay for 2 and get only 1!" I shout.
Ok, let's stop fooling and continue with the flashback. So as I was saying, I researched the Siamese, and also created a bunch of them. In fact, I created a total of 8 Siamese, all of them using the same two units: the elvish Scout and the dwarvish Miner. The Scouts have a very interesting innate skill called Nature Attuned.
Nature Attuned (Innate passive skill)
Ignores the negative effects of hazardous terrain if it comes from natural elements like plants or mushrooms.
They have the perfect skill for me, because if I put them in the areas where there are mushrooms… They will be immune! And since they are immune, they can punish the enemies without being affected by the mushrooms!
I also upgraded them to level 3 and used the skill points to add one skill of each type to every half of the siamese. The name of the template is 'Demonic Swarmer'. Why this name you ask? Take a look at the stats and skills of each half.
Demonic Swarmer - Scout Half (Lv 3)
HP54 (45)STA7 (6)SOU4 (4)
EP72 (60)MP60 (50)
STR12 (10)CON4 (4)AGI7 (6)
SPI6 (5)WIL6 (5)DEX6 (5)
SPD6 INT5 COM1
Skills
Active: Dash Triggered: Demonic Revenge Passive: Nature Attuned (Innate), Stoneskin (Innate), Strong, Commander
Demonic Swarmer - Miner Half (Lv 3)
HP78 (65)STA6 (5)SOU4 (4)
EP60 (50)MP48 (40)
STR13 (11)CON7 (6)AGI3 (3)
SPI4 (4)WIL7 (6)DEX6 (5)
SPD6 INT5 COM1
Skills
Active: Bash Triggered: Demonic Revenge Passive: Nature Attuned (Innate), Stoneskin (Innate), Strong, Commander
The speed is automatically set to the highest of the two, for obvious reasons. Can you imagine half of the unit moving faster than the other? And the 3D model stretching because the halves move away? Hahaha! Also, the Strong skill increases the STR basic value by 5, and the rest of the skills are as follows.
Dash (Active skill)
Cost: 10 EP per secondIncreases the SPD value of this unit by 3 while the skill is activated.
Bash (Active skill)
Cost: 20 EPDeal (2 + 0,8 * STR) physical damage to a single enemy. There's a 20% chance that the enemy is stunned for 2 seconds.
Demonic Revenge (Triggered skill)When an ally dies within 1 meter from you, increase all stats for 100% for 5 seconds. When this skill ends, you die.
The last thing I did with the Demonic Swarmers is to modify the AI so that, upon entering combat, they release a cry. And if another Demonic Swarmer is close enough to hear the cry, it'll move towards the direction of that cry at full speed, by using Dash, and then join the combat. For this to work I needed them to have at least a 1 in COM, so I had to add the Commander skill.
"You don't really understand how good and easy it is to have units with decent basic AI, until you have to go back to modify something on the level of the Stitched…"
The Demonic Revenge is the tip of the cake. If you kill one of the halfs, the other gets empowered by a crazy amount until it dies. I'm sure that this, paired with the cry for help and the incredible speed they can reach thanks to the Dash, is going to get more than one player killed.
Furthermore, if the Bash stun activates… "Nice try, player! Better luck next time!"
I 'liberated' three Demonic Swarmers into the Cave room, and the other five into the Tunnels. But this time they can leave the assigned room in case they are close enough to hear a cry for help coming from the other room.
The Demonic Swarmers are very hilarious. Because they are half elf and half dwarf (excluding the heads, each half has its own head), one half is significantly shorter than the other half. Guess how they walk and stand? They do so by inclining themselves into a close to a 70º angle towards the dwarf side. Let's say that they 'can't walk straight' even if they want to.
And when they run, there are moments that the dwarf half is flying and not touching the ground, while the elf half is jumping on one foot. I think the invading players are going to laugh at them… at the start… because after entering combat, they might want to cry instead.
For the other mob changes… While getting the bodies to create so many Demonic Swarmers, I managed to get another High Elf and Runesmith bodies, and created a second Lab Assistant. Which is currently stationed in the new laboratory, so one assistant in each lab.
I also managed to obtain the bodies to create two more Death Butterflies. Currently there is one of them assigned to the Cave, one to the Tunnels and one to the Freezer.
"Why put them all together when I can make the players more paranoid if they are spread out?"
And now that we are talking about the Creepy, I also created a new Creepy type. I used a Fly and a Fire Spark to create it. The Fire Spark is a critter from the Primordials faction, a faction that basically uses elementals. Elementals are considered living units, so I can actually use them to create my own units.
As with the Death Butterfly, I leveled the Creepy, this time to level 3, and added special skills to annoy the players. I called the new unit 'Fiery Fly' and managed to get enough bodies to create four of them. These are the skills that the Fiery Fly has. The Fire Elemental comes from the Fire Spark's innate skill.
Death Burst - Fire (Triggered skill)
After dying, explode and deal (10 + 10 * level + SPI) fire damage to all units within 3 meters. This damage isn't increased or reduced by having higher or lower stats.
Fire Elemental (Innate passive skill)Negates fire damage that deals less than (10 * level) damage. Fire damage higher than this amount is reduced by 50%.
In Flames (Passive skill)Deal (10 + SPI) fire damage each second to yourself and to every unit within 5 meters. This skill is deactivated until there's an enemy in the same room and within 30 meters.
It's funny how almost all the damage the flies are going to do is from the basic values of the skills. Because they have the lowest possible SPI value, a 1. And the In Flames will deal no damage to themselves, because of the Fire Elemental passive.
This time I didn't modify the AI, because I simply wanted to annoy the players with them. And you know that flies are already pretty annoying by themselves, so they're going to do a peeeeerfect job without me having to touch anything from the AI.
I put all the Fiery Flies into the Cave. I'm sure they are going to be the first thing that the invading players get annoyed with.
The funniest part is that if the fireflies get close enough to each other, they can create a devastating chain of Death Burst explosions as one explosion makes the other flies explode.
And these are more or less all the changes in the dungeon in this past week. Returning to the present….
Oh! And I almost forgot! One of the level 3 rewards is the possibility to upgrade the Champion! Though I first need to research it, so I'll need to wait to be able to do it. The current technology will allow me to add a third body to the original mix with the same conditions as before: keep innate skill and sum all stats.
"What am I going to give to my Champion next? Should I look for only stats? Or for a good innate skill…?"
"Oh, Oh! Wouldn't it be good to shoot lasers from the eyes? What about invisibility?"
"....It's a shame that I can only use humanoid bodies, because it would be awesome to add a spider into the mix… You know, all that shooting spiderwebs and climbing walls thing… Though I'm not sure if it'd work in the game."