Taking down Tentacle Monsters is boring

[uhmdown]

Considering that Tentacle Monsters drop valuable items such as spots and the spikes, I feel that taking them down needs to be made more interesting.

However, considering that they're stationary monsters with a simple attack pattern, I imagine that this is easier said than done. But here's my proposal: make them a little less stationary and add small variations to their attack pattern like so:

1. When you meet a tentacle monster for the first time, it behaves as it does now. You can use the classic attack and retreat pattern.

2. Once the tentacle is down to 50% health or so, it retracts and relocates a very short distance away. This forces you to look for it again. This also introduces risk, because it may relocate close to another tentacle.

3. If the tentacle is found again, it will popup again, but this time with shorter notice.

All this would suggest to the player that the tentacle is scared and trying to defend itself.

You could leave it at that, but you could also make the tentacles switch between two-hit attacks and one-hit attacks.

The idea would be to prevent the player from getting too lazy with the attack & retreat pattern.

If the tentacle switches between one-hit and two-hit strikes, the player won't be able to ride the monotonous timing of the attack & retreat pattern.

Additionally, you could reduce (or randomize) the idle-time after the tentacle's one-hit strike. This would mean that the player has to move in quicker to get a hit, but risk moving in too Soon if the tentacle is going for a two-hit strike.

The tentacle's idle-time after striking twice is currently quite long and stable, giving the player ample time to approach it for another hit.

Adding these small changes, a subset of them or something else altogether (with a few tentacle sound effects or animations to signal the state of the tentacle) could make tentacle hunting a different experience every time.

Anybody got other thoughts about the tentacles?

Edited December 21, 2012 by uhmdown

[iHasRainboez]

I like this, because we can't simply make combat harder this would help a lot. Making decisions is nice

[Excess]

This could be either a really good fix to kiteing the spiketacles or it could be incredibly frustrating.

Either way, I'm willing to test it out

+1

[Nickdy]

Do you have any idea how large the tentacles attack range is?!!?!? it can literally hit you from 12 steps away, i doubt the attack and retreat pattern could really be used against them. But if this is a problem you could just have it so when you are out of a specified range it retreats back into the ground and begins to follow you again.