Area of Effect powers, or AoE, are pretty common in 4^th Edition D&D. No longer are they limited to Wizards, but can be found in the arsenal of many non-spellcasters, such as Fighters, as well as being used by many monsters. It’s thus pretty important to a understand them… and once you have that, how to use Area of Effect powers in the most optimal way possible.

Continue reading Powergaming: Understanding Area of Effect in D&D4E

Wizards, apart from being arguably the most powerful character class in 3.5 D&D, have the neat ability to choose to specialize in a specific school of magic, just in case nigh-unlimited power wasn’t enough, in exchange for dumping the ability to use other schools. But what is the best school to specialize in? What schools do you dump? Is it really actually a good idea?

Continue reading Powergaming: Choosing a Wizard School Specialization

Today we begin the first of a series of (hopefully weekly…) articles discussing various powergaming strategies in D&D, both 3.5 and 4E. But what do we really mean by powergaming? How can we discuss details without understanding it? Well, that’s where this article starts. What is it? Is it good or bad? How far do you go?

Continue reading D&D Powergaming: Introduction

This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of articles, where we here at Dice of Doom look at old games, and see if they are really as good as we once thought.

Warning: this is a pretty long post. If you don’t want to read everything, just scroll through, scan the pretty pictures, and go to the Conclusions at the bottom.

Half-Life 1 was, indeed, a great move forwards in the First Person Shooter genre. But how does the gameplay hold up these days? I unearthed my copy, jumped through hoops to install it on 64 bit Vista, and started a new game.

Continue reading Nostalgia Revisited: Half-Life 1

Zombieville USA is one of those simple to play magical games that can distract you for hours doing the same repetitive thing over and over. It’s hard to say whether the charm stems from playing a trucker’s cap, flannelet shirt wearing redneck hillbilly shooting zombies with rocket launchers and flame throwers, or whether its the well designed control scheme or the simple but effective graphics. Whatever it is, it has deserved its place in the top of the game charts in the App Store for some time now.

Continue reading Zombieville USA beginner’s strategy guide

NetHack is a Rogue-like hack and slash computer RPG. It is particularly notable because it has been in development reasonably recently, and the overall quality of the game is incredibly good. The game shares a heritage with Moria and Rogue along with other games from this era. It also has a large online following.

It looks not unlike this:

Continue reading Beginner’s Guide to NetHack

I’ll get right to the point – I love this game. It has an awesome visual feel to it – very Diablo in mood and atmosphere and the controls and game play are simple but effective. The graphics on the game, and the polished feel really add to the games appeal as well. Despite having great controls, this is also the first iPhone game to give me the beginnings of RSI (although I suspect that is more due to the hours I have spent playing it than anything else). Like some other games, I struggled at first, so I thought I’d post the lessons I have learnt playing the game in the hope that it helps a few others out there.

Killing Vampire ‘Bosses’

This stumped for a little while. At the end of a couple of levels, you need to kill the ‘Dracula’ boss (the vampire in the long red cloak). You can throw a lot at this guy and he’ll keep hurting you with his annoying green beam of hurty energy and not go down. This all changes if you are using the crossbow. Obvious, I know, but it didn’t occur to me that the developer’s would have thought of that (sorry guys…). One or two shots with the crossbow at the right spot, and the dude is out, leaving a nice glowing pentagram for you to collect…

Power Ups

This again stumped me the first couple of times that I played. There is a little green square that lights up when you earn a power up. Click it, and you are presented with a random list of power ups to choose from. I have my favourite combo’s, which look a bit like this:

• Bonus loot + Telekinesis = Lots of extra ammo and health. The bonus loot is really handy to get extra stuff dropping from slain werewolves and the like. This extra loot can be hard to run around and collect at times, so why not have it come to you. This is where Telekinesis comes in – the loot starts drifting towards you as you run around making the collection job a heck of a lot easier.
• Crossbow Master = Killing Spree. You get to fire three shots from your crossbow at once, and as crossbow bolts fly straight throw monsters and into the monsters behind them instantly killing everything that they touch, this is quite effective.
• Power Shot + Telekinesis = Safely keeping your distance. Power Shot pushes monsters away with each shot that doesn’t kill them to a safe distance. If you hit them again, however, any loot that they drop will be quite far away. Telekinesis (see above) is the obvious solution to this.

There are others that are useful to, like Fieldrunner (move quickly) Deep Pockets (carry more ammo) and Bloodlust (cause more damage when you are hurt).

Keep Moving

If you stand still, you are going to get swamped. It may be tempting to get your back to a wall, but that isn’t going to help you very much when you are surrounded by an endless wall of monsters. If you are worried about moving through packs of werewolves (and realistically, who isn’t these days…) then get the Ninja power up (allows you to deflect some of the attacks).

What the Weapons do

• Pistol – push back a little, require multiple hits per kill
• Shotgun – push back more, require two or so shots to kill, small area of effect
• Crossbow – no push back, usually one shot per kill
• Blunderbuss – no push back, like a grenade launcher, one shot per kill, area of effect
• Mini-gun – big push back, haven’t worked out shots to kill ratio (too dizzy from spinning the gun around wildly)
• Rocket Launcher – area of effect, great range, big damage

iDracula (iTunes link) $0.99 (AUD 1.19)

Zombie Attack! for the iPhone has kept me happily distracted protecting the beer shack vigorously against the zombie onslaught for more hours than I care to admit. The recent update has seen the game improved immensely with new ways of controlling the dude, cheaper building, a “secret” weapon in the beer shack and the dude and shack healing themselves.

With the upgrade of the game I have started getting to level 30 pretty frequently, and I assuming that that is not too bad seeing as a lot of my friends who play the game struggle to get to level 15. Being eager to help my fellow man during the zombie apocalypse (not a guarantee…) I am posting Rupert’s Guide to Killing Zombies for Zombie Attack!.

Step One – Hurt Zombies are Easier to Pick Off (or, Why the Cannons Don’t Suck)

Hurt zombies in Zombie Attack! suffer huge penalties. For lost limbs, they lose attack strength, for lost legs they start to wander in circles (taking longer to get to the shack) and if they lost their heads they wander aimlessly only attacking if they get to a target by accident.

Using this strategy we do two things. Firstly, use the Cannon to hit the groups of zombies as they arrive through the gate. The area of effect weapon is a good way of hitting lots of zombies with one hit. Flank the cannon with swinging axes as this will definitely remove a limb or two (see above).

If your cannons and axes are doing the job properly, then your zombies will be ready for step two.

Step Two – The Beer Shack Must Be Protected

Once you have your cannons and axes chopping up zombies, its time to clean them up. The Guns are not particularly good at taking out a healthy zombie before it gets to your shack, but they are very good at polishing them off if they are hurt badly.

I place one gun at the corner of the shack first so that it can hit the three areas you need to concentrate on – the direct line to your shack and the right and left flank. Build this gun up to its maximum and be prepared to man it bravely (see Step Three below). Follow this one up with a gun on each flank to protect the sides of the shack and to proved some crossfire (see Step Four below).

Step Three – Be Prepared To Die

One of the new additions to the game is that you get a 20% bonus to any gun that you man. This is extremely useful if you start to get swamped or just haven’t got the money to upgrade yet.

Zombies will also sort of chase your dude for a little while as well which can be very useful in distracting them from breaking into your beer shack.

If you are like me, the death of the dude is not important – he comes back and its not about points, its about killing zombies. Its not unusual for me to go through 3-4 dudes…

Step Four – Crossing Arcs of Fire

After the initial set up of your defences is complete, its time to make sure that your zombies are getting hit by at least 2 weapons at any given time. This is best done by making sure that your weapons at the back of the line are upgraded first so that they can reach the zombies at the front, and also adding new weapons around the central line as soon as is feasible.

If you aren’t playing the game, you probably should be, its not expensive and lots and lots of fun.

Zombie Attack! (iTunes link) USD 0.99 | AUD 1.19

If anyone is getting much past level 30 50, can you let me know how in the comments please?

Update: I am getting past level 45 almost every game now. I am posting the set up that I am using in the hopes that it will aid my fellow zombie hunters…