Thanks to FireSeraphim for the sprites. This is a test screen of all of my new enemies I made tiles for using his template:
Basically, the Red and Blue Medusa heads are Red and Blue Wizzrobes respectively and the knights are the Gibdo replacements. The other Wizzrobes are the lesser Red and Blue Wizzrobe versions that just fire fireballs at you. As of now, the Silver Knights are more or less the vanilla Gibdos and the Blue Knights are more durable. Unlike normal Gibdos though, they're immune to lesser boomerangs, but the Hookshot can still stun them. Also, being armored, arrows are of no use and flames do nothing to them.
In summary:
Red Medusa = Red Wizzrobe
Blue Medusa = Blue Wizzrobe
Green Wizzrobe = Teleporting Bullet Shooting Wizzrobe
Gold Wizzrobe = Walking Bullet Shooting Wizzrobe
Gray Knight = Standard Gibdo with altered defenses
Blue Knight = Stronger Gibdo with altered defenses
Let's just call this post "RedmageAdam's Balancing Act Part 1". That being said, I've been exploring ways to rebalance what I would consider "unfair" enemies. This can be because of their damage output, speed or anything else. I guess you could say that this is future planning for my project for when these enemies become relevant. In particular, the enemies of interest for Part 1 are as follows:
-Death Knights
-Cracktoroks
-Stalfos 3s
-Mirror Wizzrobes
All three of the above do, in my opinion, way too much base damage going by vanilla values. For those that want the figures, see the spoiler below for their damage output (assumes you don't have any rings):
Spoiler
Death Knight has 60 HP, does 10 hearts of contact damage and 20 hearts of sword damage.
Cracktorok has 40 HP, does 5 hearts of contact damage and 10 hearts of magic damage.
Stalfos 3 has 12 HP, does 1 1/2 hearts of contact damage and 6 hearts of sword damage.
Mirror Wizzrobe has 192 HP and does 8 hearts of damage by both contact and magic.
So here are my opinions on how to balance them in a quest that caps at the Red Ring and said ring is not available until either around level 8, in level 8, somewhere before level 9 or within level 9 itself:
The Death Knight is just broken. He does way too much damage; if you fail to stun him, you're pretty much stuck getting into a corner and tanking him, praying that you kill him before he kills you. I was thinking of reducing his contact damage down to 4 hearts damage (same as a Super Darknut) and making his weapon damage 6 hearts. In addition, I considered a nerf to his movement speed since he's faster than Link and it's pretty much impossible to shake him off once he's on you. For reference, that's 1 heart contact at Red Ring level and 1 1/2 heart with his swords. Reducing his step speed to 100 and giving him Rope movement could be more forgiving as well.
The Cracktorok is similar to the Death Knight, but not quite as bad, mostly because even a crappy boomerang can stun it. Still, it's too fast and in a sticky situation, it can quickly combo the snot out of you with its high contact damage and really unforgiving magic damage. For the sake of my rebalance, I reduced speed from 200 down to 150. Now in terms of damage, its contact damage down to a base of 2 hearts and magic damage down to 4 hearts. It still hurts quite a bit and is still considerably strong, but not overpowered.
Stalfos 3s I consider to be borderline unfair. Why? They are pretty fragile, but pack a punch. The fact they throw in four directions and deal the damage they can makes them really dangerous in a busy room. That's 6 hearts a hit per sword. The contact damage is fine as it is. However, for sword damage, I'm kind of on the fence whether it should be 3 hearts base damage or 4 hearts base damage. If it matters, I currently have it set to 3 hearts of weapon damage. Like I said, Stalfos 3 isn't as unfair because it has low HP and isn't too fast. Heck, you can fight a room of 2-3 Stalfos 3s with just a White Sword pretty easily as long as you're paying attention.
The Mirror Wizzrobe is a gimmick enemy. Obviously, he's only hurt by reflected magic, and said magic and even his contact damage are grossly high; a whopping 8 hearts each hit. To be more balanced, I decided to reduce contact damage down to 2 hearts and have magic damage be 4 hearts. This also means I would have to reduce his HP since if his magic does half the damage, it would take 12 hits to kill him instead of 6. I think to be reasonable, 4 or 5 hits is enough. As it stands, I have him setup as above, but currently with 80 HP. That way, it takes exactly 5 of his own shots to off him while keeping Link from taking gross amounts of damage.
As always, I appreciate any feedback on the above rebalances.
In addition, I began designing a few more screens of level 4. My goal is to have it be a hybrid of a cave and NES dungeon. In short, it would kind of be a cave system with a small temple inside of it.
Ma'am, you are clearly mistaken. I take it you have never heard of Castlevania at all? Because I know my own spritework and I know I did not frankensprite up some Kid Icarus enemies, Those two enemies in there are clearly Medusa Heads and Axe Armours, both from the Castlevania Series.
Comments and feedback anyone? Oh and before anyone says about the room to the upper left having a tile error, I didn't catch that until I uploaded the picture, so I know that's wrong. This is my test with mountain tiles that are half light and half dark.
Looks pretty good so far! The only issue that I see is regarding the paucity of ground details. Adding a few rocks, trees, statues, etc. would certainly ameliorate the quality of the individual screens. Otherwise, you did an acceptable job with the structure, for sure. Looking forward to more previews of your quest!
Well to be fair, it's supposed to be an ice cave. I could still have statues thrown in or maybe throw in patches of ice that slow your footing down. Although my original "Ice Cave" did have trees in one of the earlier rooms you got a key in, which made no sense whatsoever.
Yeah, ice and snow would look like really cool additions to the dungeon. It gives the place more of an icy cave setting rather than just a cave in blue and purple. Other than that, it's looking pretty sweet so far. I'm loving the depth with the mountains.
One giant modern based underground center tower city - just like i saw in my dream with futuristic apartments everywhere with nerds inside on their computers all playing Zelda classic titles.
Now to design the giant walking mechs and the army guy boss driving one around attacking after link.*
Edited by SkyLizardGirl, 04 June 2015 - 04:18 PM.
strike, Astromeow, Dark Ice Dragon and 1 other like this
I'm liking the colours, Astro, looks really good. It reminds me of a palette for a custom tileset that never took off actually.
And speaking of colours...
...I built a test screen to show off a fairly large portion of my palette. That's right; that's not the only colours available in my palette. I am using six csets (thanks to empty space within the main palette) to create a universal palette for the entire overworld. I am also figuring out if there is a way to disable dark rooms from lighting up because I want to the use the "dark" feature for the graveyard area.
