A3: Doomguard Population Explosion

[Pig Catapult]

 

1-tile bottleneck: Check

Doomguard: Check

Two characters that can cast Cloud of Blades twice a turn: Check.

 

You have no idea how happy Doomguards + Cloud of Blades makes me. :3 As soon as one of them frees a space by dying, there's another one to fill the gap. And I can watch it from the relative safety of Behind The Tank. What more could a catapult ask for?

 

~EDIT~

 

After stopping to restore mana and let the CoB die down a bit, I noticed that it seems like they've STOPPED MULTIPLYING. I broke the Doomguard!

 

Happy day!

[Dikiyoba]

I guess if you have the patience for it, it's a good strategy.

 

---

 

 

Dikiyoba.

[Tirien]

Wonder what the cap for doomguard multiplication is anyways. Would be nice to know if there is a limit per doomguard or per area, or if the game gave up on the doomguard.

[Pig Catapult]

Well, there's certainly a LOT less of them now, and plenty of room for them to multiply if they were going to, but. . . I'm pretty sure the game's given up on this one, at least. As for if there's a hard cap, I don't know, but I do know that a specific doomguard unit won't spawn a new one when hit if there's no room in a ~4-square radius. I guess if that happens too many times, it gives up, maybe?

[nikki.]

Going from what we know of BoA, a town can only have a finite number of creatures, both placed or summoned (from, say, a splitting doomguard). My guess is that the original trilogy was the same, and once the available creature slots are filled, the game is unable to spawn any more creatures.

[Alorael at Large]

Right, but does the game always continue to prevent more monsters from appearing once the cap has been reached and then a bunch of creatures have been killed off? That seems like surprising behavior to me.

 

—Alorael, who on the other hand could imagine some kind of off switch for dooomguards to prevent them from becoming unplayably numerous memory leaks.

[nikki.]

I guess the easiest way to find out is to try casting a summoning spell after the doomguards stop splitting. If you're able to summon creatures, then the doomguard has some kind of off switch.

[Dintiradan]

I remember hitting the doomguard multiply limit too. Same tactic: cast Cloud of Blades and hid behind the tank (and hope your healer has enough SP to get you though the encounter).

 

It takes way too long however. There are easier ways of dealing with doomguards:

Click to reveal..

Use Simulacrum to summon a basilisk/ur-basilisk.

[Pig Catapult]

Oh yes, CoB is a SPECTACULARLY inefficient way of killing a doomguard.

Click to reveal..

Ur-basilisks, or even just abusing the Sanctuary status by casting Radiant Shield it at the end of every round

are WAY more sensible.

 

Doesn't mean CoB's resultant Doomguard Explosion isn't fun to watch, though. ;P

[Pig Catapult]

Sorry for the double-post, but I've got an update. o.o;;

 

Originally Posted By: Nikki.

I guess the easiest way to find out is to try casting a summoning spell after the doomguards stop splitting. If you're able to summon creatures, then the doomguard has some kind of off switch.

 

Well, I tried this same thing again with the Abyssal Slimes in the Pit of the Wyrm, and it looks like it's a switch; I could summon stuff just fine, but even when fighting a new Abyssal Slime with full HP, they don't split anymore.

 

. . . It now occurs to me that I've kinda broken the dungeon now. Oops. EDIT: However, this effect wears off after a while, and they started splitting again, so I guess the switch has a time limit after which it turns itself off.