Relic Sweeper 2 - by skyironsword

[Kuroaitou]

YAS! We win CleanOnion! ^^

...I'll talk more about the game a bit later, but in the meantime - thank you skyironsword for hosting this game. Relic Sweeper 3, when it'll be hosted (not anytime soon) is going to have some big shoes to fill.

[CleanOnion]

...is it done? Are we free?

Cheers to everyone especially sky!

[Linkcat]

tl;dr
Anarchy | Rare | Choose a player and a number from 1 to 3. Next turn, they will choose a number from 1 to 3. If different, deal damage equal to 10x the sum. | 4 | Epic Battle Fantasy
‹Kuroaitou› \:D/
‹skyironsword› ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[skyironsword]

Notes

• worldwideweb3 took 11 damage from an Ender Pearl, confusing Submachine as to why he had a health value not divisible by five.
• No one ever opened the J14 safe, but several people walked on the tiles adjacent to it.
• Kuroaitou entered Submachine's Vision radius and then left in the same action because of the Portal Gun activating after Submachine had moved.
• Several players attempted to create Soulstones using the Rift Recycler. dawn_to_dusk and ji412jo found three naturally.
• Suffocation damage was only taken once. Damage from an X tile was also only taken once.
• Linkcat convinced Submachine to change his moves twice. Both times, the second version was much worse for the team than the first.
• The safe at E29 would have opened if all adjacent switches that were in a row/column with no walls were toggled on.
• The only time a cooldown was reduced was when DoubleCapitals reduced CleanOnion's cooldowns with the Hacker Gate.
• Kuroaitou's character attacks did more damage than the total damage of Anarchy, Sonder, and Mini-Hakkero combined.

[Linkcat]

Sub figured out that w3 Ender Pearl'd to the tile given to him by dd and Physs with all their relics.

I also want to say that Sub is the best partner you could ask for. <3

[Kuroaitou]

Okay, so here's a general review:

-Me and CleanOnion were EXTREMELY LUCKY to have found Portal Gun by Day/Round 18-20 (I forgot the number, I'll check later). There was a 'Scale' that, when CleanOnion stepped in (he had Companion Cube), would weigh up to 2/3rds of the way through, so we had to coordinate and stick together so that when the safe was ready for opening, we would meet up on the same spot to open it. Nice little reference to Portal there too sky.

-Pixelator was by far the most deadly relic to combine with Portal Gun as a Mia teammate. Why?
~Actions go in order of Guard/Priority actions, Movement actions (basic), Defensive actions (Item Usage, Relic Usage, non-damaging character skill actions), then Attack actions (damaging character actions). The ideal situation was basically one of us uses Pixelator on a target we wish to kill one day before, and I use Fatal (gain +30 Strength) and Recover in case I don't have at least 95 EN. Then, the following day, we ensure that we're both on the same tile, CleanOnion uses Portal Gun on the target afflicted by Pixelator while I use Top Cut (major damage on the spot I'm in), which basically causes them to land onto my attack for a whopping amount of damage. I follow up with Apocalypse, which hits my tile and all tiles horizontal/vertically adjacent to me, meaning if the target tries to move in one of the directions limited by Pixelator, I still hit them with Apocalypse.

We were planning to use this combination one more time on either d2d or ji412jo, but apparently they had too many Soulstones. Blargh. So much for the 40 Relic combination/hoping that one of them had Revive so that we could give relix to Linkcat for his troubles.

-I still don't know how skyironsword wanted us to open the other safes. >_>

-Soulstones, while useful, were probably not a big deal compared to Rare Candies (far more beneficial given our low HP totals). Submachine's dropped Greater Energy Potion gave us the edge to create a Rare Candy for Onion to exploit, and thus not make me worry too much if he got hit with an attack.

-Arkendish is stronger and more versatile than Anarchy imo.

Notes

• Suffocation damage was only taken once. Damage from an X tile was also only taken once.
• The safe at E29 would have opened if all adjacent switches that were in a row/column with no walls were toggled on.

-Suffocation damage/X-tile damage were both on our team.
-I don't understand the E29 puzzle still, and I don't know what relics were placed in each chest. It'd be nice to get that information. ^^;

[CleanOnion]

@Submachine

At the time of our conversation, I was the one with Anarchy

[skyironsword]

The E29 Safe

This safe had six switches adjacent to it. There was one on every adjacent tile except directly east and directly west.

To open the safe, you needed to toggle on ALL switches that met ANY of the following criteria:

• The row the switch was in had no walls (at the time of map generation).
• The column the switch was in had no walls (at the time of map generation).

In other words, you had to hit the NE, SE, S, and SW switches while leaving the other two off.

This was an undefined safe. In other words, it would give a random relic of the rarity written on the safe. Some safes, such as the one containing the Portal Gun, were defined: they contained a specific relic. All naturally generated $ tiles were undefined (they give random relics of the appropriate rarity).

[CleanOnion]

Ah, me and Kuro thought that the E29 sage considered the Zoltan Shield because the hint was a reference to FTL jumping. We thought there would be a switch to open it somewhere to the far east of it.

Additionally we thought that a safe on the west side of the map somewhere in the middle contained Revive because the hint made reference to a Professor. I'll dinner the exact coordinates and what it contained later. However, we were proved incorrect.

[Submachine]

Since the game started, whenever I sent in my actions, I wrote different subjects on my letters to sky, which looked like this:

• Relic Seviper 2 - Action 1
• Relic Seavapor 2 - Day 2
• Relic Minesweeper 2 - Day 3 actions
• RS2 - next actions (I forgot to come up with stuff this time)
• Relic Swiper no swiping - Day 5 actions
• Relic Swinger - Day 6 actions
• Relic Swepperoni - Day 7 actions
• Relic Swippiry Sweeper - Day 8 actions
• Relic Sniffer 2 - Day 9 actions
• Riflec Sniper 2 - Day 10 actions
• Relic Tom Swelec - Day 11 actions
• Relic Svengapore 2 - Day 11 Actions
• Relic Sweeping Angels (don't blink!) 2 - Day 13 actions
• Relic Swee_need_to_go_deeper 2 - Day 14 actions
• Relixweeper 2 - Day 15 actions
• Relic Hunter: the game - Day 16 actions
• ReLC/DC Thunderswept - Day 17 Actions
• Relic o'skyScraaper 2 - Day 18 actions
• Relic See_we_winning, they hating 2 - Day 19 actions
• Relic Sweepstaker 2 - Day 20 actions
• Relic Screamer - Day 21 actions
• (this was where I died, I didn't send in anything)
• Relic Swait for it...    EEPER! - Day 23 Actions
• Relic Finders Sweepers - Day 24 Actions
• Shrelik Swamper - Day 25 Actions

About game balance, for future hosts I highly advise to avoid using infinite(or super-long)-range items, including Ender Pearl, Anarchy, Heavenly Fan, Orb of Kabriecy, (Precision,) etc and super-health items, like Rare Candy, Lustrous Breastplate, Interwoven Carapace, etc. In retrospect, I can only call out Anarchy as an overpowered feature, but that's only because I died early (there could be more, I only saw a small proportion of relics+items in action). As someone who played in both Relic Sweepers, I have to say that even though it received a lot of lashing, Kuro's version was better, because at least instakill-features (ghosts and Skull of Haunts) provided a way of comeback for the teams behind (even though the ghost leader must be changed to an AI next time). I think noone can argue that once Kuro and Clean collected twice the quota of deadly relics than any other teams, it was already over, and for other players to be doomed as underdogs for 20 more turns is bad game balance.

In the end, I feel like that my demise was a combination of an OP relic and bad luck. When I died, it came down to bad luck, because it was very unlucky to get stuck in an impossible wall formation like that, surrounded by the second place team, while they had stuff like Pixelator to make my escape even harder. But may I remind you that if it wasn't for Anarchy, I would be still alive, recollecting my health points on the border tile a turn later.

[skyironsword]

Instant kill isn't a comeback feature when attached to a relic such as Skull of Haunts. The player in the lead will likely obtain it and put them even further in the lead.

When given to a non-player effect like ghosts, the game degenerates into either luck or how much the host likes you.

In both cases, it is also extremely unfun to be instantly killed.

[Submachine]

Instant kill isn't a comeback feature when attached to a relic such as Skull of Haunts. The player in the lead will likely obtain it and put them even further in the lead.

When given to a non-player effect like ghosts, the game degenerates into either luck or how much the host likes you.

In both cases, it is also extremely unfun to be instantly killed.

Instakill is admittedly not the good solution, and I agree that the player in lead should not get even more power. That's why it would be good if future hosts came up with good comeback options or ways to prevent one team getting significantly stronger than all others combined.