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Author Topic: (0.9.9.7) [M|ArchA666|45%|223|YASD] - Armorer Diamond is an abomination  (Read 4 times)

Omega Tyrant

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(0.9.9.7) [M|ArchA666|45%|223|YASD] - Armorer Diamond is an abomination
« on: Today at 13:00 »
In theory, Armorer Diamond is an "easy" Diamond that nearly any serious player could win, you just need to find three of every special item across all your runs, and as long as you're good enough to beat HMP difficulty for the Azrael Scythe, you should eventually get this badge without ever touching N! or even UV. Yet according to the 0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters thread, only two players ever reported winning it; Tormuse and Icy, i.e. two of the greatest DRL players. Oh no... that doesn't sound like an "easy badge anyone can win" at all...

So when I first revisited 0.9.9.7 and started my conquest of it a couple months ago with my Eagerness Angelic run, I was only two uniques shy of getting Armorer Diamond, one Dragonslayer and one Subtle Knife needed to complete finding three of every special. Even back before that I was a very hardcore DRL player despite not playing N! before then, with a playtime of somewhere around 700ish hours and nearly 200 games recorded, I reasonably should have already won it long ago with that sort of time invested into the game. But still, just one Dragonslayer and one Subtle Knife, it can't be that much longer to get it, right? Any given run at this point could win it, while I had just five Diamonds and no Angelics yet, so there would a lot of runs to go through before I could think about having to make dedicated runs for this badge...

Well with those two Uniques, the Dragonslayer is perhaps the rarest single piece of equipment in the game, with it having a minimum spawning depth of 16, a spawning weight of 1, and since it's a melee weapon, it cannot spawn in vaults, nor can it randomly drop in any of the special levels. So in standard game depths, you have exactly only 7 floors it can spawn on (Hell 1 through 7), and there's no place where it could drop with enhanced odds unlike other Uniques. However if the Dragonslayer was all I needed, it wouldn't be too bad, as there is a way to guarantee it spawning in a certain special level;
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Getting the Dragonslayer that way is difficult, but wouldn't take too long to do in dedicated runs if it came down to that, especially if I do it in certain challenges. The actual bigger problem is the Subtle Knife, which is among the group of those bafflingly terrible Uniques added in 0.9.9.7 with a minimum spawning depth of 15 and spawning weight of 1, while as a melee weapon, it also cannot spawn in vaults nor in any special level, so it's basically as rare as the Dragonslayer (you only get one more floor you can find it in comparison), except there is no way to force it to spawn if it became the last Unique I needed (the Mjollnir was also among this group of Uniques in 0.9.9.7 and is a melee weapon too, so having that be your last Unique would also be just as bad, but I've had unusual luck finding it with over a half dozen of them on my file). Of all Uniques, I absolutely do not want Armorer Diamond gatekept by this one, as my only recourse would be to speedrun A666 to force this badge...

Well after nearly 60 games in my return to 0.9.9.7, with 11 Diamonds and 5 Angelics achieved, with none of those games having the Dragonslayer nor Subtle Knife, I decided to go for Centurlal Diamond, with some hope I could get Armorer Diamond out of the way there, yet alas I would find neither Unique I needed. 13 games later, with my Diamond count now at 16 and my Angelic count at 6, I decided to go for Centurial Angelic, not only to get that badge but to also double it up with Armorer Diamond, surely I would get both Uniques I need after 666 floors? Well I did find the Dragonslayer in that run after 385 floors, but still never found the Subtle Knife even after 666 floors. The Dragonslayer is the far far far better weapon and did speed up the rest of that particular A666 run, but if I had to only find one, I would have actually preferred the Subtle Knife, since as mentioned, there is a way to force the Dragonslayer to spawn in the standard game and so I could do that as its own run (which I'm probably going to need to do anyway for Gutts' Heart to finish out Heroic Diamond), while with the Subtle Knife, my only recourse would be to grind out A666 games... Still there are many other Diamonds and Angelics left, just maybe I could find it in one of those runs, or otherwise in the several AoOC games I pumped out to get enough Carmack kills for Apostle rank?

Yet here I am, with 22 Diamonds, a record 10 Angelics, and said Apostle ranking, the RNG did not drop the Subtle Knife in any of those runs. With only a few other Diamonds and winnable Angelics left, at this pace I was going to do everything else I could do before I got Armorer Diamond. Since in the remaining runs, I may be unable to detour for Uniques that spawn and not wanting to risk losing something like a Destroyer Diamond or Masochist Angelic run for seeking an out-of-the-way Unique, I decided I should just bite bullet and grind through A666 to get Armorer Diamond done now. I got unlucky with the Centurial Angelic run not having a Subtle Knife drop, but surely I would get it in the next A666 game, and it wouldn't take that long if I just speed through it on HNTR with Blademaster, right?

Well in the first run, I would find the Dragonslayer again (and the Berserker Armor but I forgot to pick it up), yet it'll be a second consecutive A666 game that the Subtle Knife would never drop... (Here's the link to that mortem I posted on the JH Discord if you want to see it, can't post multiple A666 mortems in the same post without running out the character limit.)

Well I could only try again, surely it won't be a third A666 game without the Subtle Knife ever dropping, right? And in this run I had a lot better luck with other items, including an early Chainsaw you almost never see in 0.9.9.7's A100/666 that let me get through the game much faster, many Uniques early on including a floor 17 Lava Armor and floor 23 Malek's Armor that let me comfortably stair dive much sooner, and the Dragonslayer yet again. Yet that luck ended up for nought, as I would go an entire third A666 game without the Subtle Knife ever dropping... (link to mortem.)

To say I was frustrated at this is an understatement, how do I find five Dragonslayers without ever doing the guaranteed method for it in this file before finding a third Subtle Knife, and why does the RNG keep giving me the other stupidly rare yet also useless Uniques like the Mjollnir and Mega Buster (the latter of which I've found 14 fucking times!). There's nothing I can do about it though but just boot up yet another A666 game. My Unique luck this time was much worse, with not finding my first Unique until floor 48, which ended up being that fucking useless ass Mega Buster of course, and the pace didn't pick up that much from there. However on floor 223, at last, the grind for Armorer Diamond would end when the RNG finally decided to drop the Subtle Knife, at which point I just killed myself, as there were too many floors left and 0.9.9.7's A666 is far too repetitive to put up with any longer.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So once I started attempting Armorer Diamond directly, with only two Uniques I needed for it, it took me four A666 games and running through 2221 floors before I finally got the second Unique I was missing for it. The play time on my 0.9.9.7 file as I got Armorer Diamond was 1031 hours!. Even if you assume half that time was from the game being run idle, it's insane it took that long to get a badge that is purely grinding, especially when I ended up having to bruteforce it sooner by running those A666 games, who knows how even longer it would have been if I didn't do that, I almost certainly get the rest of the Diamonds and winnable Angelics before I win Armorer Diamond, it's no wonder only Tormuse and Icy won this badge previously. I wonder what the hell Game Hunter was thinking when he bumped the old easy Armorer requirements to what they are now, surely there was a more sensible middle ground between the two (well to be a bit fair to him, the Armorer badges got changed in 0.9.9.5, before 0.9.9.7 added all those 15 depth 1 weight Uniques including the Subtle Knife, but even prior to 0.9.9.5 with a smaller specials list and Armorer Diamond then requiring just finding one of every special, only Tormuse reported winning it then, so it's not like Armorer Diamond was an overly common Diamond then to merit bumping up its requirement to such an absurd degree). If you're wondering, it also took me finding 1695 specials total before I got Armorer Diamond. Well with Armorer Diamond done, I now got 23 Diamonds, tying papilio's reported total for second most Diamonds, of which I'm especially not looking forward to Destroyer and Arena Diamond, but at least those won't be purely grinding out 666 floors after 666 floors after 666 floors...
« Last Edit: Today at 13:14 by Omega Tyrant »
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0.9.9.8 Badges - [26|26|26|18|6|2] (26/26/26/26/23/10 in 0.9.9.7)
0.9.9.8 Medals - 44/50 (40/43 in 0.9.9.7)
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