Gnoll Geomancer | Patreon Weekly #235

Hey Patrons, in this weekly I’m going to go over final progress on the Gnoll Geomancer!

Edit: whoops, I seem to have hit 'publish' instead of 'schedule', oh well, you guys get this one a day early.

The Gnoll Geomancer Fight

As mentioned two weeklies ago, my plan was to implement gnoll sapper attacks into the geomancer and then see what the fight needed after that point. After a bunch of coding, the geomancer was causing rockfalls and slinging boulders, but the fight was definitely still lacking something. My initial plan was to add a third attack, but I ended up coming up with something else that works better.

Firstly, let’s go over how the fight works real quick. Initially it spawns asleep, but once attacked a few times the geomancer leaps into action and dashes away while carving a large path through the cave.

A significant amount of the geomancer fight is spent trying to close distance with the geomancer while evading attacks. The geomancer gives itself rock armor which you must use your pickaxe to break, so getting into close range is mandatory here. The geomancer will dash and carve a rocky arena three times in total, and each time it will try to move toward a location where a gnoll sapper spawned.

If that sapper is alive, the geomancer will work with the sapper to stop you. This means more rock attacks and an extra-powerful earth shield on the geomancer that you must kill the sapper to break. Gnoll guards can get in on the fight too, so you probably want to clear the cave out before starting the geomancer fight.

The geomancer uses the same abilities as the gnoll sappers, but I’ve added some logic so they get steadily more intense as the fight progresses. Eventually the geomancer will start dropping rocks in a giant AOE and can hurl up to three boulders toward you at once! This attack amplifying mechanic is the main reason why I decided a third attack was unnecessary.

While these attacks aren’t too tough to dodge, the amount of available space can drop quite quickly as more rocks fall, and the penalty for failing to dodge can also be quite harsh. In the worst case, it is possible to get stunlocked by both the geomancer and a sapper attacking you at once. There’s less planning ahead needed compared to the crystal spire, but the attacks are more frequent and more punishing.

I plan to do a bit more testing and tuning of the gnoll area over this next week, but it’s otherwise done! I’d like to do some work on the third variant before considering a beta, but a public blog post seems likely by this time next week.

…I may also decide to share an early alpha with you guys soon, to get some feedback on the gnoll quest variant.