ezequielb wrote:
No, I don't think so. There is nothing worse than tar. I don't care how roaches and queen roaches are used by the most creative or sadistic architect out there. They follow the logic of how DROD works and one can expect to find a breakthrough in a week or so. Tar just DOESN'T make any sense in the CONTEXT of this game.
This isn't Tetris for F***'s sake, the sword is used 99% of the time to kill things, and all of a sudden you have to use it like a DESIGNER TOOL.
I guess this goes to show how level design has changed over the years. Even without spoiling any new elements I can still think of several uses for the sword beyond just stabbing enemies:
1. Sword is a mobile barrier that keeps a monster off of you while you move it into a specific location.
2. Sword is used to carve a specific path in a section of broken walls (I had a lot of fun designing a few rooms around this concept; broken walls are an underused element in my opinion.)
3. Orbs lock a gate, so you need to get through an orb maze without your sword hitting any of the orbs.
4. Sword is used to prevent a mimic from moving normally, giving you additional leverage. (How do you make mimics more fun? More mimics! At the same time! But seriously, mimics were to me what tar is to you when I first played KDD.)
I guess as the player-base got more familiar with basic combat people started looking for more clever things to do. It's often the case now that the actual killing of monsters with the sword is just a kind of clean-up phase that happens after the room has already been solved.
Although, if you want to use the sword as a killing device, you can approach tar rooms as though you have to kill all of the tar. That should work for most of them. Treat isolated blobs of tar like roach queens (don't get surrounded during a spawn) and clear them out as best you can instead of rushing for the mothers. It won't be efficient, but it will be safer. This should work for most tar rooms in KDD I think.
Xindaris wrote:
I can also guarantee that there are worse things than tar. But it's never really "what it is" so much as "how it's used". Tar can be used in a non-keyboard-crushing manner, and just as well, the elements you probably think are "easy" now can be put to use for some serious torture by a skilled enough architect. Just you wait--TSS, the final entry of the series, features a level in which roaches and queens become the most horrendously torturous element imaginable.
Yes, usage definitely makes a big difference. Also, that level that you mentioned at the end there was the moment that I realised that roach queens were my favourite element in the game, so personal factors also factor into it.
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106th Skywatcher