How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

I was playing with Doom horrors, and came across the Maker of Ruins. It killed
a defense 50, 400+ hps unit in one round of attacks. It has four weapons. I
can see that they are area 1, and I assume that the effect triggers even if the
weapon does not hit. But even with a weapon that always hits, and cannot be
resisted by any means, I still do not see how it could have gone through 400+
hps. Any ideas?

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Crank up the debug level and find out?

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

I'm thinking insta-kill.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Can you 'crank up the debug level' on the replay, or does it have to be on host?

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

AFAIK the debugging is tied to your running Dom3 game. Regardless if that game is hosting a turn or replaying it in the GUI.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Maker of Ruins has 4 x Horror Claw weapon.

It has Str 45. Each Horror Claw is 1 attack, AN, damage 0, AoE 1, magic dmg.

Defense 50 doesn't matter because for AoE, Armor is ignored because of AN damage. Are you sure it's Defense 50 and not Protection 50? Defense 50 is really hard to achieve, but Monolith Armor will give you Prot 50 pretty easily.

That's only 180 damage base, though. I wonder if you take weapon damage when it hits, for 180, and then AoE damage for the same amount? So 360 base, assuming you did not have 50 Defense. Add some DRNs and 400 is not too far off.

But please run the battle with -dddddd on, then you'll be able to see exactly what happened.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

The logs do say everything that there is to say: the Maker of Ruins gets two
rounds of attacks. He does not appear to be hasted, but he still acts like it.

So he has 8 guaranteed 45 damage hits. They ignore defense and armour, so
he will do an average of 360 hit points of damage to anything that does not
have twist fate/luck/mistform, and about 150 points of damage to anyone who
has all three up by the time it attacks.

The good news is that it does not fly. The bad news is that many other horrors
do, so that scripting your guy for your favorite spamming strategy is suicide.
But I have not seen all the Uber Horrors, so I will not go into that. Once I
have studied all, I may try to come up with something that works against all
of them. So I guess here is what may work against he Maker of Ruins:

0. Flight + Quickness + Mage bane + Armour of Virtue + great stats. This of
course works against everyone. If you got the gear, enjoy the Hell out of it.

1. Spam. He can go throught 2 squares of anything in a round. Many commanders
can beat that. He may have special abilities to dodge the spam, I have not
tested it.

2. Two rounds of buffing, attack. May the force be with you. Odds will be
with him unless you are geared for SC killing.

3. Two rounds of single target spells, Returning. Works fine unless you are in
your capital, but reduces your commander's value as anything but a forger,
rutual caster or dominion source.


Let see which horror shows up next... What does it say about you when you are
looking forward to Doom Horrors?

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

30 blood slaves. Fills the area round your commander. Gives you time to buff, cast single target spells etc.

Works against the fliers too.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

The best defense by far in my experience against horrors is Claws of Koytos, and I assume the fire version would be just as effective. Perfect accuracy, no MR check, and is guarenteed to get rid of the thing. Bad news is it only banishes the Horror and they are likely to escape at some point in the future and attack a random province of the map. Doom Horrows seem to usually disappear after the initial attack, though.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

So for most of the game, they're likely to come back and attack an enemy's province? And this is the bad news?

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Sounds like the cool news to me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

I suppose so, but I had a Doom Horror sieging one of my castles and going nowhere, so its a kind of roullette that the player cannot control. I suppose in general it will work in the player's favor unless they control the largest portion of the map.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Is 50 protection even possible? I had a feeling it was capped at 40, could be wrong though.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

> 30 blood slaves. Fills the area round your commander. Gives you time to buff,
> cast single target spells etc.

Right. A combination of slaves, items that summon chaffe, and a massive
summoning spell in the first round may help with stopping the flier,
but you are not really guaranteed even one round against a flier. The fliers
seem to be acting twice in a round as well, which means that its first attack
may be against a square right next to your commander. Then, the
horror's special way of choosing targets would garantee that in the second
phase of its first round, it targets the commander. Doom Horrors are a pain.

> The best defense by far in my experience against horrors is Claws of Koytos

I think that range 25 is just not enough to reach a Horror in round
one. I guess range 30 is just enough? But yeah, I keep forgetting
about the unresistable spells. What's the other? Banish to Inferno? School?

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

> Is 50 protection even possible? I had a feeling it was capped at 40, could be wrong though.

It is 52 defense, not protection. I do not understand why everyone assumes
that I made a mistake in the original post, and never bothered to fix it.
I know that protection has a cap, but I cannot remember what it is.... Well,
one way to learn.

---

Well, I managed to bring protection to 36, but my commander refuses to cast
invulnerability... to top it off.

---

Ok, I got it to 38. Monolith armour, black steel helmet, invulnerability,
and legions of steel. It sure looks like its is capped at 40, given that
inate protection going from 9 to 25 just gave a bonus of 2.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

IIRC, you could go higher if you only used natural or armor, not both, but that was in Dom2 and, since helmets and shields no longer add, it may not be possible without modding.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

The bracers of defense will increase Prot based on a percentage of your base Prot, rather than just a numeric increase. It's quite a good item to have, if you're just after raw Prot, and easy to produce.

Their description really should be modified, because it lists the increase as a flat +2Prot/+2Def, I believe, but that has since been proven incorrect.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Bracers of Protection, you mean? +2 def +2 Prot
Krupp's Bracers would be better +4/+4

How about an Earth Bless? Or do you need a non sacred chassis to get there?
Is there still the bug with bracers where the Earth Bless protection bonus gets applied twice?

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Except that, as stated above, the braces do more than just +2def/+2prot, providing you've already got high Prot. Try building a Cyclops with Earth 10 and giving him black steel helmet, black steel full plate, and a black steel tower shield, and then look at what the bracers do for him.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

When you're done doing that, you'll hopefully realise that it's a typo http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif
I haven't tried it out with Krupp's Bracers, because A: they're an artifact, and B: the regular bracers are extremely cheap and easy to research.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Just tried it with the Cyclops you suggested.

Without the Black Steel gear, the Bracers take him from 30 to 31. Black Steel Full Plate takes him to 36, the Bracers add nothing.

That, I assume, is due to the usual calculation of actual protection based on natural and armor.

If there's something else going on there, I don't see it.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

It doesn't work with the cyclops. But there is definitely something odd about it. Put it on a prophetized Commander of Ulm for better results. Looks like he's getting his bless bonus twice. Bug? I suspect it works like the following: Earth bless gives +4 prot to every piece of armor that a unit is wearing, i.e. helmet and body armor. The bracer of protection counts as 2 prot for head and body, and because the game considers it as armor, this is boosted to 6 each from the bless. The funny part: Contrary to most magic items, Bracers of protection stack. So if you give your earth blessed prophet two of them, he gets +12/+12 prot. Probably even more if he had more misc slots... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

I knew about the Earth bless bug. Actually thought it was in the bug list. I know it's been talked about here before.
That didn't seem to be what HoneyBadger was talking about.

2 of them shouldn't stack though.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

> The funny part: Contrary to most magic items, Bracers of protection stack. So if you give your earth blessed prophet two of them, he gets +12/+12 prot. Probably even more if he had more misc slots...

They do? Would that make a skull necklace and two bracers stack as well?

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

It stacks with flame helmet. So you got +2/+2/+5 from the items and +4/+4/+4 from the bless. In sum +21 Protection with this 3 items.
Not sure what do you mean with skull neckless?

Never saw a bug here which give me the bless bonus twice on each item.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

The skull necklace armor gives +10/+10 prot because it's not specified as helmet, body or shield.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Oh yeah, you're right, Cyclops doesn't work. It was the Agarthan middle era sacred captain that I was first using them on, and someone had mentioned that they'd gained "Cyclops-level" protection. Too bad they don't work on Cyclops though.

Why do the SC Pretenders get so little love?

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Skull necklace armour? Wow! Four years of Dominions, and I have never heard of
it. Is it something you wish for?

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

No. It's not an item, it's an armor type (like Plate Hauberk or Full Helmet etc) that some creatures have. The EA T'ien Ch'i summon Demon of Heavenly Rivers, for example. The armor gives 10 protection to both body and head the same way the Bracers of Protection do.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

I believe one of the four armed Pretender chasis (the one with fear and blood magic whose name I cannot recall) comes with it as well. I assumed it was just an odd type of chest armor, though, and not a miscellaneous item that boosted protection across the board.

Re: How does the maker of ruins kill?
 

Used by Deva (Kali), Demon of Celestial Rivers, Dakini IIRC