12th Archivist
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What is very heavy, super tough, and can survive the effects of an explosion? Aside from serpents, a titanium golem is the correct answer. This type of golem is similar to its weaker cousin the rock golem because it is just as dumb.

The titanium golem is extremely heavy. So heavy a single golem can weigh down a platform. So heavy they can drop trapdoors. So heavy they can move single mirrors when they walk (in the direction that the golem is walking). Fortunately, they can easily be dropped off of cliffs or into water by making a golem follow you in that direction.

We're not kidding. The titanium golem is incredibly tough. Neither sword nor hook can destroy these creatures. Hot tiles have no effect on them. Also, they can survive nearby explosions. These guys can even resist briar, though the briar usually surrounds and traps the golem.

However, titanium golems are made of metal. Oremites are the other method of removing them. If a golem stands on oremites for a single turn, it still gets eaten and destroyed. Being made of metal, adders cannot and will not eat a titanium golem even when it would die if it didn't.

Just like rock, titanium does not make good gray (brain) matter. Like the rock golems, titanium golems cannot navigate around walls and if blocked diagonally, will not move. However, when brained and faced with the same situation, titanium golems will always move horizontally to reach its prey.

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[Last edited by 12th Archivist at 12-01-2010 10:00 PM]

zex20913
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Usually I think of a slew of questions for new feature requests.

None such here. Well explained, and it seems like it would play well with others.

Ah--one question. As they're metallic, are they shiny? Could they act as mirrors?

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12th Archivist
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zex20913 wrote:
Usually I think of a slew of questions for new feature requests.

None such here. Well explained, and it seems like it would play well with others.

Ah--one question. As they're metallic, are they shiny? Could they act as mirrors?

I suppose a titanium golem is shiny enough to reflect the gaze of an aumtlich. However, the body of the golem is too varying in shape to reflect an evil eye's gaze with any concentration. In other words, does reflect aumtlich, doesn't reflect evil eye.

I have a question for myself. *raises hand* *calls on self*

Would there be any Titanium Giants? I would say no, because they can't be broken. Most puzzles that have to do with Rock Giants have to do with some way of breaking them up in the end. Titanium Giants cannot fulfill that role because, (nearly true) quite literally, nothing can destroy them. This removes the puzzles that involve breaking giants to block passages for other giants (as seen in Entropy, The Great Machine, Twice South Quarce East) or to break them up for adders to gobble up the single golems; you know, the obvious puzzles.

That doesn't mean they should be entirely discarded, though. In addition to being consistent to Rock Giants, Titanium Giants work well with other elements. Unfortunately, they have no other tricks up their metallic sleeve besides the ones already displayed in Titanium Golems. Unless someone could come up with several practical purposes for Titanium Giants, they should be left alone.

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Chaco
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12th Archivist wrote:
That doesn't mean they should be entirely discarded, though. In addition to being consistent to Rock Giants, Titanium Giants work well with other elements. Unfortunately, they have no other tricks up their metallic sleeve besides the ones already displayed in Titanium Golems. Unless someone could come up with several practical purposes for Titanium Giants, they should be left alone.

Just because you're suffering from a lack of imagination for how to use Titanium Giants doesn't mean everyone will - for example, Titanium Giants could still be broken into golems by dropping one or more of their component squares down a pit or into water.

Furthermore, since titanium golems will not consider pits or water obstacles and will move into them and be destroyed, titanium giants could conceivably cross single squares of water or pit.

Titanium giants do all the same things that titanium golems do, including dropping trapdoors and moving mirrors, which definitely have puzzle potential.

Furthermore, a titanium giant is something that moves exactly like a rock giant but can't be split up into multiple rock golems, even when Beethro puts his sword into it or when it's standing on hot tiles. That's got to have some potential.

Overall, I support both Titanium Golems and Giants as a source of puzzle potential and additional intrigue, and think that many interesting stories or puzzles could be made from their presence.

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12th Archivist
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Titanium Giants (I would assume) are made of several large chunks of solid metal. It is doubtful that one would cleanly split if a single tile would step over pit or water.

Eh. I suppose your idea is better than my being annoyingly practical. I fail to see how not being able to break titanium giants would be good puzzle potential, but now that I think about it, they certainly could be.

In reality, I suppose it is possible to split a giant. Making a giant stand on a single tile of oremites would break the structure into three other golems. Standing on two tiles of oremites would leave only two golems left. This makes sense, and I can imagine puzzles that involve titanium giants and oremites.

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Chaco
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Chaco wrote:
Just because you're suffering from a lack of imagination for how to use Titanium Giants doesn't mean everyone will - for example, Titanium Giants could still be broken into golems by dropping one or more of their component squares down a pit or into water.

Furthermore, since titanium golems will not consider pits or water obstacles and will move into them and be destroyed, titanium giants could conceivably cross single squares of water or pit.

Upon further thought (as in, me re-reading this and thinking about it) these are mutually exclusive options, since the entire point of dropping a bridge or having terrain removed from beneath a rock giant is that the giant splits purely because there's water or pit beneath it. Therefore I'd probably prefer the second option (all four squares of a titanium giant have to be in the same type of terrain; pit or water in order to be destroyed in the appropriate manner) to enable those sorts of puzzles.

In the first option, a titanium rock giant could run into a one-square pit trying to get to Beethro, break apart into its component titanium golems, which would then continue to fall into the same pit. While this would be amusing, I think Beethro should need to lure a titanium giant into a large-enough (containing a 2x2 square) pit or water pool in order to dispose of the giant at all. The oremites breaking the giant into smaller golems are still applicable.

The second option enables puzzle potential for titanium giant movement differing even further from rock giant movement. This means that titanium giants can use "shallow" 1x1 squares of water or larger as standing points, even across pits - a bridge built of staggered water squares in a checkerboard or other fashion (not a pure rectangle) will only let waterskippers or titanium giants across it.

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[Last edited by Chaco at 06-23-2009 05:08 PM]

12th Archivist
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I think the second option is really cool. What about if a giant is standing on 2 squares of water/pit and two squares of land? What is the giant is standing on three squares of water/pit and one square on land? Would the giant split, fall, or still be able to stand?

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Chaco
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There's obviously a lot of subjective leeway on the subject, but I would guess that all four squares would need to be the same terrain type; otherwise we would have a giant "falling through" a square of solid land that happens to have water on it, or "drowning" in a square of pit that doesn't have water in it.

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Briareos
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What about hot tiles? I take it a Terminator-2-esque melting and recombining is out of the picture?

np: Fink - Move On Me (Sort Of Revolution)

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12th Archivist
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Briareos wrote:
What about hot tiles? I take it a Terminator-2-esque melting and recombining is out of the picture?

np: Fink - Move On Me (Sort Of Revolution)

Hot tiles really aren't that hot. If they were 3135 degrees Fahrenheit (1725 degrees Celsius) (the melting point of titanium), ordinary creatures with be instantly fried. Because this is not true, hot tiles have no effect on either the golems or giants.

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Someone Else
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Brilliant! I like the idea of something small that can't be destroyed by briar. Could they be eaten by adders? I vote no, but I think that it's still important to address. Maybe, for hot tiles, if they are on one and attacked by a sword, they would be destroyed?

12th Archivist
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Someone Else wrote:
Brilliant! I like the idea of something small that can't be destroyed by briar. Could they be eaten by adders? I vote no, but I think that it's still important to address.

Being made of metal, adders cannot and will not eat a titanium golem even when it would die if it didn't.

Already addressed it, though maybe not as cleanly and as directly as possible, since it is obscured by the rest of the paragraph.

Maybe, for hot tiles, if they are on one and attacked by a sword, they would be destroyed?

I vote no. Hot tiles are probably around 500 to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit and would not observably weaken titanium golems or giants, even when smashed with a massive eighty kilogram sword.

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~Scott Manley

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[Last edited by 12th Archivist at 06-24-2009 05:14 AM]

zex20913
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Someone Else wrote:
Could they be eaten by adders?

12th Archivist wrote:
...

However, titanium golems are made of metal. Oremites are the other method of removing them. If a golem stands on oremites for a single turn, it still gets eaten and destroyed. Being made of metal, adders cannot and will not eat a titanium golem even when it would die if it didn't.

...

Emphasis mine.

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Charlie Eppes
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I was just considering the fact that metal that is heated up usually maintains that heat for quite a while. What if titanium golems could be heated up on heat tiles and then retain the heat for a while so it could destroy anything it walks into. The reheating and cooling down time could be adjusted to maximize puzzle usefulness. Perhaps bombs might do the same thing?

If they don't melt in heat what about a freezing tiles? Many things, I am not sure about titanium, become brittle in extreme cold and so maybe that tile could make titanium golems vulnerable to shattering in a few ways.

There would be a problem of rapid heating and cooling, as I know that almost anything can be shattered like glass if it experiences enough rapid heating then cooling, or vise versa. (If you don't believe me then look up how the rosetta stone was shattered in the past.) Perhaps it could be a way of shattering giant titanium golems. You would need to choose between these options or have different rules to determine when the titanium golem is just heated/cooled down by a tile and when it is shattered.(i.e., what defines a rapid temperature change)

You could always have hot/cold switch tokens, too. The cooling tiles would instantly freeze some monsters allowing them to form protective walls or such things. They would be completely shattered with no trace by hitting it the statue with a sword, bomb, etc. Perhaps others would have to stay on it longer? Might be better to be consistent and make it so they are the same as heat tiles.

Titanium golems and rock golems would both leave behind mounds. Perhaps the titanium mounds would be fine enough to be reflective? Maybe in two directions? Perhaps the rock mounds could be completely destroyed if you switch the heat and cooling tiles?

It just occurred to me that these ideas might have come up already, if so please direct me to that page so I can see what discussions arose. I am just making up this as I go so please forgive the scattered nature of my thoughts. I will try and clarify them later when I have more time.

What do you think?


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Tahnan
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Charlie Eppes wrote:
What do you think?

I think it's a well-thought-out suggestion, but that I have a certain resistance to it because I fear it's too baroque. I feel like any new element should bring one or two major differences from old elements and beyond that should maintain a certain consistency. So hot tiles, for instance, have the effect "doesn't hurt tarstuff; anything else standing there for more than a turn dies". The more complicated an idea, and the more exceptions it has, the harder it will be for players to really get their minds around.

What I like about the original suggestion--and I do like it, I should note--is the way it brings an entirely new concept ("instead of swords killing them, they die by walking into pits or water") and frames it within an existing one ("otherwise, they're much like golems").

On the other hand, I may just not be visualizing very well; Charlie's suggestion may be clearer than I think.

Tahnan
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Oh, right, "new" as in "new to the game". I didn't mean to slight anyone who'd suggested something similar. I also think this is a particularly good implementation of "kill by leading into pits", again because it's framed in an already-existing concept.