Messages posted by: 320

If I were you I would get Loaded 2, because you get onslaught weapons. If you don't think you'll use them, there's no rush there. You get the max ammo as well, though.

Loaded 3 gets you the super weps which are not that useful/beneficial to keeping you alive. Once in a great while they will get you out of a bind but their common use is to rack up extra points and exp.

I didn't like loaded 4 because all my weps were magic but some would be negative and magic. So instead of just a plain flak, or a -2 flak, I'd get a -2 slowfoot flak! Ugh! The first thing I did after loaded 4 was loaded 5.

Bottom line, get loaded 2 if you want onslaught weps. Don't go past that until you're ready to grind all the way to loaded 5.

If you like to use the high rate-of-fire weps like the link and mini, you'll need to get lots of resupply. If you don't use those weps much, Resupply 2 is probably enough. (I never run out of ammo with the weps I use most).

As for the rest, I recommend getting to vamp 4, which should allow you to live through most of the waves without too much of a problem. Ignore regen, IMO.

You should also max out your wep speed and dmg bonus. Max dmg bonus is 40%, so generally speaking, each time you shoot a monster, you are getting 40% more exp. Combine that with a 50% faster fire rate. This makes leveling unbelievably faster and will also keep you alive - the sooner the monster goes down, the sooner he's not shooting at you anymore.

Dmg reduction: I think of it like this. For each skill point you spend you get 1/2 percent DR. Assuming your health is 100 (i.e. no health bonus), that's half a point of health added by your DR. If your health is maxed at 200 (total of 300 health), that's 1.5 points of health. If you're at 300 and get a keg, you get 399, so each dmg reduction point gives you just shy of 2 points of health.

On the flip side, for every skill point you spend in health, you get two additional health points regardless of anything else. Thus, I recommend maxing out health before putting points in DR.

For the immediate, I'd get another level of vamp, resupply 2, max out damage bonus and wep speed, then two more of vamp.

Yesterday I ion'ed a few unlucky people and had no piercing weapons at all.

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

I'm intending that Monster Summon type people in the future will be able to summon titans. They'll be able to summon 1 (one) titan at a time. They'll be able to pick the location as well.

It will be an exclusive path, just like loaded weapons and artifacts, so they'll need these pets to complete with the rest of the players. They wont be able to summon more than one though, and for everyone else, no more monster tongue.

Do you think this will adequately solve the situation?

Yes

Dr.Stimpack wrote:

If you fired your beacon in a pool of acid, you can use the magic weapon maker on it and have the beacon returned. This is also a useful last resort tactic if you're not sure if your beacon is damaged or not and you absolutely need the translocator to be working again.

Wow, awesome tip.

I'm curious to know what LW players think of adrenaline. For me, it has basically one purpose: to power the triple. On rare occasions I'll use it for booster. Of course, I say this but everyone knows I'm not much of a wave 16 player.

ops:

As far as adren and the triple goes, I store up for waves 6, 12, 14 and 16. I'll also use some on wave 11 if I get the opportunity.

I only have about 107 adren, but that usually is enough. I might run out at some point during a titan wave and have to take one down "the old fashioned way" but then I'm back in the swing of things. Obviously, if you max your adren that's ideal, but in deciding how to spend my points, I think I could get by with around 140 and rarely bottom out.

On the other hand, I don't use the globe much. It burns adren *so* fast and I think a well-placed transloc is probably more effective in the end. I'd probably think differently if artifacts were bindable, though.

Fro13 wrote:

I got speed switch 2 just for that doing that stuff. I switch weapons alot, no need to worry about rate of fire when you can use 3 "slow" power guns in succession (Avril, lightning, flak). If there was a speed switch 3, I would buy it.

Agreed, anyone who plays aggresively should consider this skill. In addition, Awareness also has a lot of benefits. By knowing the monsters' health, you can be much calculated/confident. I've run headlong into four or five titans because I saw they were all near death. I've run away because they were all very healthy...

Waves 1 - 5:

On small maps I use flak/mines. On mid and large maps, I use Lightning/mines. If I plan to focus and try to get as many points/exp as possible, I don't hand out weapons on wave 1 (sometimes don't even check to see what they are, really). 1. It eats into the wave. 2. The players who could use the good wep I would hand out (newer players) are often still downloading the map and not even in the game yet, and 3. Your best chances for artifacts are in the early waves. I could be wrong, but I believe there's an artifact limit so once people are loaded up with boots of flights and electro magnets (and don't toss them), you're usually out of luck for a triple.

Spacey wrote:

5) This one is specific to RPG itself, and so I list it last. If you have deployed weapons like the mines, or even a primary fired deemer, if you switch to a different weapon after firing, you stand a very good chance of having the magical abilities of your new weapon apply to the one you just fired. I have seen mines vorpal kill, and am fairly certain I have vamped on a "normal" redeemer. Geez...imagine doing a primary fire deemer then switching to that vorpal 10 lg while running double magic (making it a +20) before it hits.

If I have a triple, I activate it when I fire a deemer. Up till now I haven't considered "maximizing" the equation and seeking out a weapon for that added bonus dmg, but with the rage weapons, this is something I'd like to start doing.

Continuum wrote:

Just an added note to the switching of weapons, if you fire an avril and then switch to say a poison bio rifle before the avril hits (or any other weapon type) the magic effect from the weapon you are currently holding is applied to the avril.. works with mines too

That's a good point. I don't alter my strategy around weapons very much unless I've got something really nice or really bad. Like if I get a vorpal avril, I'll make sure the avril rocket impacts before switching to another weapon. Normally I wouldn't care.

That's why I'll give away a vorpal shock on most levels, particularly smaller ones. I'm just not very good with it and the clunkiness I introduce trying to bring it up and aim it usually means I'm way too late.

I don't like the shock for other reasons, though. It's too weak. It takes three shock hits to equal one lightning and even with a triple it seems to take an eternity to down a titan.

I think also, this is one of the reasons LA players have it tougher - they have to alter their weapon strategy from round to round depending on what's available and what people give them. Of course, on the flip side, I think a LA player probably ends up more rounded. To each their own.

EDIT: Suffice to say, I don't currently agree with what I wrote in this post.

For LA, shock is a very powerful weapon. For example, with LA, shock + triple will usually beat an avril when killing a brute if there's any sort of distance involved. It's higher rate of fire helps with poor ping or poor aim.

You got my vote!

As is well-known at this point, the deemer and painter are killing players even when the player who fired it is nowhere near the explosion. It's also been confirmed that it's not a wall-squish or falling off a ledge kind of thing. For some reason, it is inflicting full damage to players, at this point, in a seeming random fashion.

To give an idea of the severity of this problem, I was killed three times today (ghosted), brought down to about 80 health on another occasion. I saw probably half a dozen other players killed for the same reason. All of this was during three rounds, or about 1.5 hours of gameplay.

My suggestion is to turn off Loaded 3 (if that's possible) until this gets sorted, and/or for players to not use these weapons except under the most conservative of circumstances, such as on large maps or mid-way through the tough waves when the balance of players is already out.

Okinesu wrote:

Alright! Well, after typing for a good 20 minutes, I promptly closed the window with all the text. So I typed it up here, check it out!

A lot of good stuff for players to consider. I do some of those things. But for example, my aim isn't the greatest and a widened FOV just exacerbates that. I ran at around 105 for about a month, but eventually went back to 90.

Minimal HUD - definately. It took some time to get used to not seeing the weapon bar, but I countered that with custom crosshairs. I use different, highly visible crosshairs for each of my main weapons so I always know what I have equipped. I have the super weapons hot-keyed, but so as to avoid accidently firing one (in case I hit the key by mistake), I use a super-huge crosshair that is impossible to miss.

Well, in case there's any question, there is definately something wrong with the deemer. At least three times in the last couple days I've fired it and was nowhere near the explosion and took no damage myself, but killed other players. It wasn't by knocking them off ledges or into walls, either. For example, I fired one into the center of the grassy bowl area on roman arena and it killed three people.

I haven't figured out what causes this, but since it is consumate with the new weapons, I wonder if they have anything to do with it (maybe if you're holding a rage or reflecting, you take dmg?)

So for the time being, I am only using the deemer in circumstances where I'm certain no one else is around.

Tidu! wrote:

Just a few things I use:

Rage rocks. Whenever I have one, I always use it. especially on titan waves, because your heatlh could be 1 the entire wave, and the same outcome would occur if you had 300 health.

I've been really curious about the Rage weapons because they do so much damage. But at the same time, I totally rely on vamp to pull me through. I'll have to play with it for awhile and see if I can adapt. Rage 10 plus triple dmg is 600 percent dmg.

I think for the avril, since I'm not firing it constantly, it would be quite useful.

Here's how I use the Mine Layer, another favorite of mine.

I like this weapon so much I programmed a button on my mouse for it. Another I have programmed is the flak. I can switch between the two very quickly. In order to do this, I have to toss my Bio Rifle and pick it up again (if I want to keep it). This switches the order between the bio and mines so that when you hit your keybind, you'll go to the mines first. Otherwise, you have to double-tap your keybind to get the mines.

If you play UT or any FPS games with any regularity, you really owe it to yourself to get a mouse with at least a couple extra buttons. I've seen them for as little as $20 at 800dpi. If you don't want to do this, you can program a keyboard key as well.

For anything I'm describing to work for you, you need to have "instant" access to the mines in your control scheme, and that either means key-binding or mouse binding unless you're a robot and can mouse scroll like a champ.

First thing's first - a lot of people think the mine layer is a "no skill" weapon. I even heard this a lot when I played onlaught. Obviously, I don't agree. If you don't use the mines strategically, they won't help you much. In other cases, they'll kill you.

A simple use of the mines is to cover you when you snipe. You fire a couple behind you and then snipe away. Don't place them too close, though. If a nali runs up on you, the mines will lunge at both you and the nali and explode. Sometimes this is enough to kill you if the nali was able to hurt you as well.

Mines work very well in this capacity because 1) they react relatively quickly (pets are much slower to react and save you) and 2) they have 360 degree "vision". Nothing can sneak up on a mine.

Key binding is very important because mines must be used in volume. Since you only get two at a time, that means you will be switching back to them constantly to fire more. A lot of people will throw a couple mines while they wait for the wave to start and that's it - they don't use the mines for the rest of the wave. To get the most out of them, you have to fire them a lot.

Mines are a "downtime" weapon. In those short expanses of time when you're not actively shooting at anything, that's when you fire out the mines, or check on their status if you threw some down previously. It's automatic at this point for me, but if I kill something and if there is nothing in my peripheral vision and nothing super close on the radar, I'll bring up mines to see if I need to lay more while simultaneously running in the direction that the radar dictates. But I would never stop shooting at a brute to check in on my mines.

As far as I can tell, monsters ignore the mines and only focus on human players. In onslaught, if I see mines chasing me, obviously I'll run away or shoot at them. The monsters just run right into them.

This is a good thing to note if a nali is chasing you with a shield gun. You can just drop a mine as you're retreating and since the nali will generally take a straight path to try and get you, the mine will deal with it.

Another use of mines is to "control space". For example, you are in one room with a room to your left. You run to the entrance of the other room and fire two mines into it and return to the first. By doing so, you've increased your "coverage" area. Anything coming from the left is likely to be injured or dead.

A good place for your mines is at intersections and generally speaking, not close to the walls. If a monster is just around the corner from your mine, your mine will lunge at the wall and detonate.

Another type of space control, mines are also great for choke points, and in the case of invasion, high-traffic areas. For example, there's one Invasion level that has one elevator from a lower level to a higher one. (I think it's called the Deck or Deck 17). This is the only way the bad guys can come up and attack you. So you place the mines near the elevator. On A-China, there is only one door that the enemies use to get in and out of the city. That's where I'd put my mines and concentrate my fire.

You have to use the mines strategically or you will quickly hit a point of diminishing returns at higher levels. A lot of learning where and when comes from experience and practice. If you just throw down your mines randomly, 1) You won't get much benefit from them, and 2) You'll waste a lot of time throwing and checking up on them (either visually or by switching to the weapon). Since invasion is an extremely fast-paced game, even this small amount of time is significant. Do you check your mines or shoot at something way down-screen with your shock? If you're a good shot (I'm not) then probably the shock is the way to go. Again, experience and your own play style dictate the flow.

I also like to set up combo kills with the mines. If a monster is not focused on you, that is the best time to do as much damage as possible. Take a metal skaarj, for example. The moment you shoot it, it starts running around like crazy and is much more difficult to hit and takes much longer to kill. If you hit it with even a mini round, you activate the running around like crazy routine. But you didn't do a whole lot of damage and now you have to chase it down. Idealy, I would rather run right up to it and fire the flak at point blank. Running around or not, it's mostly dead at that point and easy to finish. Of course, since other players are also shooting at the monster, you don't often have the luxury of running all the way up on the bad guy and you have to compromise. The only way to figure out what to shoot and when is through experience.

Adding the mines to this equation, when I'm at distance from the monster, I lob two mines in its general area (remember, monsters basically ignore the mines), switch to flak and fire away. The flak and mines hit the bad guy all within an extremely short amount of time, usually before it has the chance to focus on me, shoot at me or go running around and become difficult to hit. So by firing two mines and then firing the flak, I'm coordinating three attacks to hit all at once, not three flak shots that fire one after the other. Ultimately, this has a similar effect as null entropy or freezing. You get to attack the monster while it's stationary as opposed to moving. A great level for this is IfullTower, since there is a lot of open space.

You can use this same combo with great effect on titans, warlords and queens either by itself or by working in the triple. You'll learn to fire the mines just far enough away from the bad guy, activate the triple and then finish with flak. Ignoring dmg bonus, I think that's about 700 dmg - before the monster even turns toward you.

Well, that's all I can think of for now. I'd love to hear ideas about the shock or link, since I'm terrible with those guns.

Addition: I also forgot one other great thing about mines. They greatly increase your chances of getting bonus exp from kill combos. Often times you'll kill a couple bad guys and get nothing to shoot at for 10 seconds, then kill something else and get DOUBLE KILL. Somewhere in the interval, your mines killed something and kept the combo timer going.