Forum:Grue is a bad game mechanic

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So I'm really excited to take part in next month's devnull challenge. I've been playing on that server the last few days and getting the hang of the special challenges. I gotta say that I was leary at first, but they are a welcome addition. Except Grue.

Grue has killed me 2 out of 4 runs so far. The first time was just plain not fair. They need to warn you that 'you will actually die for realsies if you keep going'. It should just start hurting you every step until you die (Don't Starve style). This way we'd at least have some proper feedback for the Grue mechanic.

The second time I died, I knew what I was doing but a candle wouldn't light. Ehhh, felt cheap even then. It's so anti-climactic. I fought my way through 16 dungeon levels only to be eliminated in a whisper.

Thoughts on this? Anyone agree?

--Ryan Dorkoski (talk) 18:20, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Completely agree!! Utter crap! Had a very promising character succumb to this! Had NO idea what this challenge meant. Even heartless (at times), brutal ADoM is not this brutal with its grue element.

Furthermore, I had no idea the accepted challenges applied to all of your future characters. The boulder challenge is not very pleasant either and can break games if the stairs are on the other side of a boulder! --User (talk) 17:11, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

While I don't have experience playing the challenge myself, to me, "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." IS "you will actually die for realsies if you keep going". I only played Zork very briefly when I was young, but the way the grue kills you almost immediately made an impression on me. So I suspect that how that reads to people will depend on their past experiences with the concept. Chie (talk) 14:43, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Chie: Zork players know instantly that grues are bad news. But I can see where someone who did not have prior experience with Zork would find this odd. Zork was unusual in that you found your light source (the brass lantern which shows up in NetHack) before entering the dungeon, but could have it stolen by a thief whom you might not be able to catch for some time. Not having a light source limited what areas you could go to, because grues were always instadeath if you tried to stay in a dark room, and there were a lot of dark rooms underground. It was even possible to get stuck if the thief stole your lantern in the wrong place. So it was a frustrating element to begin with, but it was vital to the difficulty of the game. The combination of nostalgia, insane difficulty and frustration value no doubt made the concept very appealing to the developers. ---Ms. J. Marie Stanton, Professional Valkyrie (talk) 17:34, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

My Zork knowledge is limited as I played very little of it as a kid and I most often infrequently played at a friend's house. Text adventures became near non-existent in my play time as soon as I found Hack, and to a lesser degree, Rogue. I do want to play all of the Zorks some day. ADOM has a reference/feature with grues in it and is the only thing I knew about them. In ADOM you have a chance of instadeath every turn in a dark space, depending on luck. I thought that is what it was referencing. --User (talk) 00:40, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I mean, text adventures and rogue-likes were both archaic-seeming when I was a teenager, so for a while when my computer-major boyfriend introduced me to them, I had no real preference between the two at first. The best text-adventure, in my opinion, was ‘’Spellbreaker,’’ the third in a series that was the sequel series to the original Zork. It had these incredible magical/intedimensional puzzles which were really cool, but it was sure Mondo-mama hard. I say all that to say: ADOM is fine and all, for what it is, but to really get an idea of what the developers played themselves in the old days, I really recommend Zork. So much of Nethack originates there.--Ms. J. Marie Stanton, Professional Valkyrie (talk) 13:16, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I disagree. Start-scum for a light source such as valkyrie with oil lamp. B-line to mine's end, find the portal, identify the device, apply it, and you're done. It's not hard or complicated. There is a wiki section about The Grue challenge as well. -- Winny (talk) 00:32, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

The point was not how easy it is to achieve the challenge, it was simply how fair it is. Also, I rarely start scum and secondly I like to try a new game or things like the challenges unspoiled (at first). I lost an incredibly promising wizard that was *fully* loaded and played for a very long time. Was just about to do the Gnomish Mines, and I just died. Instadeath. --User (talk) 01:05, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorry to hear about your promising run cut short. The patch gives the player a warning, though slightly cryptic, feels spiritually NetHack. Remember your first several games, YASD every time. Isn't that what makes NetHack fun? -- Winny (talk) 11:28, 17 November 2017 (UTC)