PotD floor 200 solo clears

[MagicalLoli]

Hi! Just figured I'd leave some of my thoughts here. Some of you might know me as the one who writes the POTD/HOH solo/party guides :3

I think SE has learned a lot from POTD solo, and HOH was designed with that in mind (boss damage is sustainable with potion/steel). HOH is very solo-friendly and people have cleared on all sorts of classes. POTD solo is definitely a more questionable experience than HOH. Not only is the climb long, but it's a lot easier to get screwed by unfavorable RNG due to a smaller amount of tools to deal with things (e.g. concealment in HOH can get you past some nasty rooms, where in POTD you might have no option but to rage a room of proximity-detection monsters sitting on an exit). Moreover, mechanics such as the 180 boss's enrage, as well as the insane damage output of the 190 boss, means that any class that's not RDM has next to no chance (there are some niche strategies to delay the 180 boss rotation and burn it down, as well as methods to sustain through the 190 boss, but such techniques are very hard to execute). But, I think that's ok. As much as I would love to see POTD soloed on more classes, it's probably tricky for them to retroactively balance content, even though we know it can be done, seeing how they tuned HOH.

I see a lot of people complaining about the difficulty, or RNG-nature of the content. As weird as this might sound, I think the RNG is the most exciting part of it. I've done a lot of savage raiding as well as some dabbling in ultimate and the interest of those encounters is a lot less than deep dungeons for me, due to them always being the same - you eventually memorize a rotation for them and do the exact same thing every week. With deep dungeons, there's a lot of decision making on the spot. Moreover, the sheer length of the content ensures that nobody really gets "RNG carried" to a victory. Though, it is definitely balanced in a way such that, with garbage luck, you can play perfectly (which myself, and many other long-term deep dungeon soloists cannot manage to do) and still not be able to clear. If it was balanced to be clearable with said garbage luck however, then it'd be far too easy should you get above-average luck.

[Eldevern]

...

Exciting?

With my garbage luck, since I never manager to clear at least the first ten levels, I wouldn't call that exciting XD

I see what you mean but... the problem is garbage luck is punished the first levels. I could understand luck matters more and more the levels we climb, but at the start, it kills the possibility to acquire experience and somehow, find some way to, at least a little, deal with garbage luck (even if we can't hope to clear all the levels).

[RyuSaarva]

Exciting?

With my garbage luck, since I never manager to clear at least the first ten levels, I wouldn't call that exciting XD

I see what you mean but... the problem is garbage luck is punished the first levels. I could understand luck matters more and more the levels we climb, but at the start, it kills the possibility to acquire experience and somehow, find some way to, at least a little, deal with garbage luck (even if we can't hope to clear all the levels).

you do know that you can avoid every floor trap right?

[Eldevern]

...

Yes, that's not the problem. You... probably don't get what "garbage luck" means. You need to experiment it to know what it really means and... there's no fun at all. If... luck is between -5 and +5... I'm... around -4. Hopefully, it mainly applies to games, thought real life isn't really fun.

[RyuSaarva]

Yes, that's not the problem. You... probably don't get what "garbage luck" means. You need to experiment it to know what it really means and... there's no fun at all. If... luck is between -5 and +5... I'm... around -4. Hopefully, it mainly applies to games, thought real life isn't really fun.

how do you even die in the first 10 floors then, by opening treasures when you are low HP?

[TheMightyMollusk]

how do you even die in the first 10 floors then, by opening treasures when you are low HP?

Bad luck with spawning traps and explosive traps. It happens. At least it's happened to me once or twice.

[RyuSaarva]

Bad luck with spawning traps and explosive traps. It happens. At least it's happened to me once or twice.

but you can avoid all of those...