Sacrificing prisoners

[YourMaster]

It is possible to sacrifice enemy creatures and reap the rewards. This is a huge benefit as it saves you from having to convert them.
For example throwing enemy imps in the temple gives you a discount on new imps. Capture two trolls? Throw them in your temple and receive an Orc.

In a big fight with an enemy keeper, both of you are almost gone but you manage to drag a bile demon, mistress and troll to your prison? Throw them completely unhealed in the temple and turn the tide of battle with your very own .

I think it's a bit overpowered, but I don't know how it should change.

So, what should happen when you throw enemy creatures in the temple?

• Current behavior: You get full reward
• Effects the Enemy, so just like he sacrificed them
• Different rewards/punishments for enemy sacrifices
• No effect
• Creatures walk over water and escape
• Other, specify

[Hades]

The temple gives creatures to whoever commands it.

[Shonji]

I personally think it is fair play. It is just another option of what to do with your spoils of war. Convert, starve, graveyard, temple.

But my suggestion is if you want to make it harder, make the creatures be hero alligned so you have to fight them, then convert them. But other than that, I believe it should stay the same.

[YourMaster]

I personally think it is fair play. It is just another option of what to do with your spoils of war. Convert, starve, graveyard, temple.

But my suggestion is if you want to make it harder, make the creatures be hero alligned so you have to fight them, then convert them. But other than that, I believe it should stay the same.

It is a really powerful option though, if you get the right creatures you'd be a fool to try and convert them. For imps it's either the graveyard or temple, converting is the fools option. Same goes for trolls and insects really.
For converting you have to heal them and be careful not to let them expire.

If you can no longer directly sacrifice them, you could still convert them first, sacrifice them later.

[DragonsLover]

Imps shouldn't be able to be captured or used as corpses imho. Once they die, they die and vanish, whatsoever. Otherwise, imps are the torture chamber and graveyard feeder, producing tons and tons of undead.
Horned Reaper should be only acquired once per level through the sacrifice.
Other than that, it don't see any objection to sacrifice the enemies in the temple. I mean, you're sacrificing the prisoners, which is better than your own minions. Otherwise, just convert them to your side and sacrifice afterwards, which is pointless.

[YourMaster]

Imps shouldn't be able to be captured or used as corpses imho. Once they die, they die and vanish, whatsoever. Otherwise, imps are the torture chamber and graveyard feeder, producing tons and tons of undead.
Horned Reaper should be only acquired once per level through the sacrifice.
Other than that, it don't see any objection to sacrifice the enemies in the temple. I mean, you're sacrificing the prisoners, which is better than your own minions. Otherwise, just convert them to your side and sacrifice afterwards, which is pointless.

Provided you have access to a torture chamber,.. and have the time and resources to convert.

Even so,.. I wouldn't object to imps disappearing into a puff of mana DK2 style.

[DragonsLover]

There's no convert here. Don't heal the imps and hope they die of torture. Free ghosts!

[Shonji]

It is a really powerful option though, if you get the right creatures you'd be a fool to try and convert them. For imps it's either the graveyard or temple, converting is the fools option. Same goes for trolls and insects really.
For converting you have to heal them and be careful not to let them expire.

If you can no longer directly sacrifice them, you could still convert them first, sacrifice them later.

But that is the point of those rooms. If you fail an attack, the enemy is going to get stronger no matter what you do. They will make Skeletons, convert, Vampires, Ghost, sacrifice, that is just the spoils of war, or attack while your weakened. I wouldn't really look at it in a way to prevent it, it should be up to the players to know when to attack and pull back. I never did it since I usually would rather make Vampires or Skeletons or Converts over sacrifice, but I think it is fitting to sacrifice your prisoners if someone was foolish enough to let you get a full combination.

Although what Dragon said about Imps I agree with, often you can easily beat any AI or even player by just imprisoning their imps which cost them more to get more. Or use them as Vampire fodder, it isn't hard to trap 10 imps at a time in a 1 tile area and kill them and pump out Vampires easily. If they poofed like in DK2 that would stop something that can be easily spammed.

Hell I would even say sacrificing any creature should give some kind of benefit. Heroes for instance have no use, perhaps have sacrifices for better Heroes or have get rewarded with certain amounts of Gold? 2 Barbarians=1 Giant, Giant+Fairy=Samurai,Samurai+something=Knight, but stays Hero so you have to knock it out still. Or have different Gold values for them. Say a level is low on Gold, so your means to keep funds is sacrifice all the Heroes you find. Dwarves are 100/300, Archer and Thief(When can't turn into Knight) are like 500, 800 for Barbarians, Wizards, Thieves, have big prices for the very good Heroes like Giant, Samurai, Knights. Giants are 5000, Samurai 10000, Knights 15000. Since it never made sense that the Dark God wouldn't want Heroes to do what they please with.

[Metal Gear Rex]

Regarding the Imp and Horned Reaper.

I'm supportive of the changes under the assumption that they're in a patch of some sort. They're quite radical and impact the game significantly, as I'm sure is already known. I also have no problem with sacrificing prisoners.

The Temple is given to a player for sacrificing, primarily, unless there needs to be a way to counter the Scavenger Room, but that room should rarely given as well as it's so powerful. The happiness Creatures gain is fairly useless as Creature management in DK1 is very easy. That being said, if a Temple is granted, then it should be considered by any level designer that the player will have the benefits from sacrificing. It is not an essential but a bonus room.

The Prison is much the same, not an essential but a bonus room. Usually it isn't given in combination with the Torture Chamber due to the usefulness of converting. However, as the Temple itself only adds the bonus of sacrificing, it's only natural that the two rooms can be combined for a higher possible efficiency. These rooms were given to a player to benefit them, they might as well be used in any way the Player likes.

Converting imps is actually not that bad, heal spell can be a lot cheaper than imp spell. I wouldn't call people who convert imps fools.

It depends on how much a Player values the Ghost, or the Vampire I suppose if the Graveyard is available. There's also more to be gained than a simple convert though. The Imp tends to reveal a lot of information before he converts. I find that information more useful than 10 Ghosts or 1 Vampire, especially as the Imps tend to be Level 1. If they're not, they're usually past Level 3 or even 10, and that is a more useful convert in and of itself.

Killing imps for vampires is tedious and it's really a personal choice if you want to use the imps for that.

When DK2 changed the imps so that they would not leave corpses it was quite a pointless and unnecessary change.

I would heavily disagree with that. Imps leaving behind a corpse is far more significant than that. It's not even an intentional abuse half the time, you just end up with a crap load of Imp corpses one way or another, and you have to do something with them. Otherwise that's very wasteful. Sometimes you can't even avoid the usage.

The difficulty of deliberate Imp abuse for Vampires varies in difficulty. If a Boulder Trap is available and involves a Player who keeps his Imp count within an easier and more manageable level, then it's incredibly easy. Kill all your current Imps with the Boulder, kill any additional Imps with the Boulder as well. It ends up becoming about 150 per Imp, so 1500 per Vampire. With Temple Sacrifices, Imps can be even cheaper, so you may not have to kill your current Imps off to lower the cost.

But that's about where deliberate Imp abuse ends. The rest of the issue is unintentional for the most part.

I've known of Players who create, to me, an absurd amount of Imps. 30 to 40ish. There's no way in hell those Imps are managed well, but I guess that's the point. Create so many Imps so you don't have to manage them while still gaining the benefits. It costs a lot of Gold, unless you get the Temple of course. However, that is not the issue or the concern. The fact of the matter is, for such Players, those Imps are going to die in masses because they cannot be managed. As a result, you end up with a load of Imp corpses, who naturally go to the Graveyard. It doesn't even have to be an alteration of Player style. If you have access to a Gem, you will naturally feel more inclined to create more Imps, which can also contribute to the problem.

Without that, there are other things that can kill Imps quickly. For the Heroes, it's Traps. Nothing like claiming a room with 5 or so Imps and then encountering a Lightning Trap. Traps are still dangerous under the command of a Keeper, bu they're not the most dangerous thing to the little critter's life. It's Keeper Lightning. That will come suddenly and BAM, dead Imps. The end of all Imp Wars. There's really no way to prevent this. Traps can be prevented under the Heroes if you bother to do some extra micromanagement to set off and exhaust Traps with one of your more durable Creatures, but in a Keeper map, that isn't very practical as it's even riskier should you encounter one Creature that triggers the Keeper to drop his army on whatever you have possessed and kill it. Keeper Lightning is also impossible to dodge, unless you want to spend about 900 Gold per Imp to cast Protect.

The loss of your own Imps can naturally end up in spontaneous Vampires, which can very easily alter the balance of powers. It has nothing to do with your Creatures vs his, it just happens that all your Imps are dead and have banned together in the afterlife to rise again as a Vampire. When I say it has nothing to do with your Creatures vs his, I mean that you don't have to lose battles nor does he for it to happen. The creation of the Vampire will, naturally, have an impact on the battles to come, but how much depends on how many Vampires you rise and what point of the game it's at. However, the condition of battles before that in addition to Creature quantity and quality prior to that is essentially irrelevant.

It's not just the loss of your own Imps, but the loss of another Keeper's Imps. This can happen in the same manner you lose your own Imps, also resulting in countless little Imp corpses. However, there's a little more to it than just that. If you have at least a Prison, you may be aiming to capturing the enemy's Creatures to put them out of commission, make Skeletons, or converts. To that end, you may very well end up capturing enemy Imps in the process during Imp hunts, as you naturally want to kill any of an enemy's Imps off to win the Imp Wars. This can result in you gaining Ghosts or, as mentioned above, valuable information and Imp converts. In the case of the latter, those additional Imps can also bring your Imp counter to an unmanageable level, where the result is as mentioned above, more Vampires. Except, you also get use out of the Imps before then and information of your enemy's dungeon layout.

Let's not also forget the impact when the Scavenger Room is taken into consideration! If you gain a surplus of Vampires from the Imps, you can potentially scavenge out an enemy's Vampire, if you keep the pressure on with Creature battles and prevent the enemy from keeping his Vampires in the Scavenger Room. Additionally, your Vampires can get scavenged by the enemy and make the map even more difficult to win the map. Beneficial or not, who cares? That is completely irrelevant to the arguement, as the point is that Imps contribute to the making of Vampires, rather heavily, and the spontaneous Vampire creation can have a drastic impact on the map overall, whether it's in your favor or not. I've had instances when I was younger where I throw a Vampire immediately in Prison after it's created to deny it to an enemy Keeper, as their Vampire situation got out of control.

This is not something that can be ignored as a Player choice. Abusing Possession in DKII is Player choice. Abusing Cave-In in DK1 is Player choice. Abusing the Gold exploit in either game where you drop any sum of Gold on a Creature before Payday and completely negate their next payday is Player choice. You can ignore it, easily, if you want, and keep playing the game without it. However, this isn't really Player choice. If it isn't clear enough by what I mentioned above, then I will say it simply, it is very much out of the Player's control.

True, there is a way to prevent it, but that takes a lot of excessive micromanagement and is only possible under certain instances. In addition to a Graveyard, a Prison is necessary. You need to have a second prison somewhere off to the side where you can drop enemy Imps and slap to death, behind a locked door. This'll prevent other Imps from dragging them to the Graveyard, but that takes planning to take into consideration with the original dungeon layout, in addition to time to micromanage on top of only being possible under certain circumstances of Room availability. It actually hurts the Player to do this, so it would be preferable for any Player to avoid it, and by doing so, they gain additional benefits. Before it is mentioned, leaving the Imps in prison is not a valid solution. It screws with the AI as they don't create more Imps, to my knowledge, increases the cost of additional Imps for any player, and also takes up Prison space, requiring a larger prison to be built. While the latter two do go hand-in-hand as a somewhat legit strategy, it of course isn't a strategy at all as a Player is doing it solely to avoid the creation of Vampires.

So, Imps leaving behind corpses is very significant, even if indirectly, and that's why I only support the notion if it's going in some sort of patch. I still desire to see FX revert back to DK1 defaults as not everyone who plays it has any choice in the matter and may prefer the original game, with me being one of those people as an example. As a result of this, I wouldn't support the change if it went into default FX because of the significant impact it would bring.

tl;dr: Imps leaving corpses is very significant and very much out of the Player's control, effecting maps and benefiting players on both side in ways that vary depending on room availability. DragonsLover may or may not be pregnant after loving too many Dragons, and you suck for not reading.

We could accept that the Horned Reaper should be only acquired once per level though the sacrifice if you can prove why it's game-breaking to have more than one horned reaper at a time. (I don't recall the Horned Reaper ever actually being any better than any other of the powerful creatures and heroes, despite what some people have tried to claim).

The Horned Reaper has 2000 Health. Not counting the Avatar's 3000 Health of course as he's the final boss, the highest Health of any Hero is 950, goes to the Knight, who is essentially the boss of a stage. Not counting the Horned Reaper, the highest amount of Health given to any Creature is 1200. So the Horned Reaper can tank like nobody's business due to raw Health.

The Horned Reaper has 150 Strength. The Avatar, again final boss in the game, has 150 Strength. The Giant has the highest Strength among the normal Heroes and Creatures. His Strength is 100. Behind that, the highest value is 80, shared by the Bile Demon and Knight, not counting the Dragon's 90 as he lacks Melee. So the Horned Reaper hits really hard, being 50% stronger than the Creature behind him, the Giant, who is only 25% stronger than the Creature behind him.

The Horned Reaper has 70 Armor. This isn't an absurdly high value, but it is definitely above average. The Avatar's 120 beats it, in addition to the Knight's 100 and Dragon's 90, but that's it. Behind him are Creatures with 50 to 60 for average Armor, and then Creatures with below that. He doesn't need absurd armor though. Combine this with his absurdly high Health and he will be tanking even in his old age.

The Horned Reaper has 160 Dexterity. Strength stats range similarly to Dexterity values, and with this being higher than his Strength, we can already tell he hits hard. The Avatar beats him here with 180, but that doesn't make much of a difference. The Knight has 150, coming close, but he's also a boss. Among normal units, the closest unit to him is the Thief, with 120 Dexterity, and the Thief sucks. So, not only does the Horned Reaper hit harder, but he also has a tendency to not miss. (not including the dexterity bug of course)

This post is taking forever and I think I've already made my point, so I'm going to wrap up the Horned Reaper with a Defense stat of 70, a pretty high value, allowing him to dodge decently, and a luck of 30, allowing him to critical hit fairly frequently when you combine that with the Speed Spell. For comparative purposes, the highest Luck value is 40, by the Fairy. And as mentioned, he has Speed, so he hits hard, hits precisely, and very frequently on top of the former two.

He seems like a pretty broken melee unit. Naturally if you throw him out against a horde, he'll die, but with him leading any charge, you will dominate the game easily so.

I'd be interested in seeing a special trait making it so only one of that Creature variant is obtainable via Temple, perhaps more preferably a script command. But regarding the Horned Reaper himself, I think it would be better to simply nerf him a bit. Then again, how much do people like the fact that they have something blatantly overpowered, even if one of them?

[BlueTemplar]

- You should get reward from sacrificing prisoners, as it's quite evil.

- Getting mana from sacrificing heroes seems logical, getting gold, not so much.

- What Metal Gear Rex said for the Imp=>Vampire situation. Imp=>Ghost and "Imp forever in prison" is not so aggravating as the player has actually control over it. Plus imps dying => other imps trying to drag them to graveyard => imp hecatomb is SO annoying...
Example :
http://www.gog.com/forum/dungeon_kee...morkador_stuck

- Having multiple controllable reapers is what differentiates DK1 from DK2. Yes, they're strong, and you can micromanage them, but they're quite expensive, and if you slip up and they turn berserk, the only thing you have left to do is to get rid of them. Maybe they should turn "hero" when they get berserk, so that it's not as easy to get rid of them as just throwing them out of the portal or in prison/torture chamber? Plus, some levels, like Mistle and Moonshadow Keep, wouldn't be nearly as fun without an army of baby reapers...