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Kalphite King: Regicide


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I will cut right to the point. I despise bosses like Kalphite King, where the big advertised threat is interesting, but rarely used. Instead, death comes swiftly on the wings of the Kalphite Marauders or in the blast radius of a magic bubble. Some other issues are as follows:

 

- It's 'signature move' is used far too infrequently, to the point of being a gimmick.

- It's 'signature move' mainly acts as a filter to stop soloers so it can retain the much coveted title of 'unsoloable'.

- The benefit of teamwork does not scale after you've found a tank and voker.

- Runescape handles twitch gameplay poorly. Imagine if you were playing a shooter and, upon seeing a grenade, you had to wait .6 seconds until you could run away. It wouldn't work there, and it doesn't work with Kalphite King's magic phase.

- Dying to a stun feels more like tripping over your shoelace instead of being eaten by a dangerous beast. It's just not fun.

 

This thread aims to address these flaws in the way of a new boss concept.

 

The Boss

 

Before we get started, this is about game mechanics. However, reading "the boss" over and over can get a bit tiring and is also very impersonal, so I have decided that I'm going to call him Steve. While I'll leave his aesthetics and lore up to you, I thought I should at least give him a temporary name.

 

Steve is based, like the KK, around a powerful attack. He will begin his attack without warning, which will hit the targeted player for 5,000 damage 5 times with a two second cooldown in between each hit. There are two main ways to avoid this.

 

The first one I'll get into is armor. Any armor starting at level 70 will reduce the damage taken for this attack by the following amounts:

----- Power - Tank --------

Lvl 70 - 10% - 13%

Lvl 75 - 15% - 19%

Lvl 80 - 20% - 26%

Lvl 85 - 25% - 32%

Lvl 90 - 30% - 39%

 

This accomplishes a few things. First, money spent on armor will buy you solid protection, not a roll on the RNG. Damage will be reduced based on the quality of your gear. Second, ports gear will have the distinction of being the lowest tier armor that you can successfully out-eat his full special attack solo, while also granting a substantial 12% damage reduction over Nex gear in a team.

 

The second method for dealing with this boss is teamwork. Like the Kalphite King, this utilizes both the provoke and/or barricade ability. Both abilities will get him to switch targets, but they differ slightly in how they work.

 

Provoke - Draws Steve's attention to you, who after a two second cooldown will continue his attack on the provoker, until he has hit the collective team 5 times.

 

Barricade - Steve targets player with lowest health and instantly hits them for 1.5x damage (no cooldown) after which the attack continues as normal. Retaliatory hit is counted as one of the 5 hits in his quota.

 

There are two paths here. You can use barricade to guarantee you won't be hit again, but possibly kill another player. Alternatively, with a well practiced team, you can spread the damage over everyone for a total of 25,000 base damage spread over the team, instead of 27,500 and increased ko potential. Teamwork is rewarded.

 

Bottom line

 

- Steve uses an interesting mechanic often, making for a fun fight.

- The attack does not require cutting off all of a player's means for survival in order to guarantee a cheap kill for the boss, while still remaining dangerous if unprepared.

- Creates the niche that tank gear has been waiting for. A viable alternative to power armor.

- More teammates means less damage taken per player. Kill speed is no longer the sole deciding factor in team size.

 

Questions? Comments? Corrections?

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I'm not a boss hunter or really good when it come to game design, but I like it. Just one question. Why did you start the scale at level 70. Is that because that is the point armor starts to scale exponentially, or is it to supplement your last statement "More teammates means less damage taken per player. Kill speed is no longer the sole deciding factor in team size." whereas a large and prepared enough team can almost relax a more strict armor requirement? I ask because earlier you mention "Second, ports gear will have the distinction of being the lowest tier armor that you can successfully out-eat his full special attack solo." which to me implies that members should have a bare minimum of Ports armor.

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"Goals dont have a deadline." -xxxgod quoting Lady Shahdie

[slayer "Essentials"][click pic for main blog][click quote for mini blog][Worthwhile Auras]

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Mostly because it's affordable and the first set of armor you'll really have for a while before you can buy a better set. I suppose you could start the scale at 60 with a 5% decrease, but barrows is really dirt cheap and I doubt many people with 60 defence would be interested in endgame bosses. That said, there's no reason to have it start at 70, I'm just waiting for a better idea.

 

A lot of people like soloing bosses, and ports gear would let you do that without a shield. For a 5 man team, you could use any armor you want though, as long as it has more than 5k lifepoints. Higher leveled gear just lets you have smaller teams and/or survive hits more comfortably.

From the empty days of hope, deny the darkness
Follow my voice, we'll run far away from here

If only to hide, to escape this life
And live forever, forever in the sun

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kalphite king is fun

 

this attack sounds like vorago's main attack.

 

i think the best strategy would be to barricade and then abuse heal other to heal your whole team.

best drops (reasonably accurate/up to date): 1x Elysian Sigil (LS), 1x Arcane Sigil (cs), 4x Armadyl Hilt (solo at 100m, 100m, 50m, and 5m), 2x Saradomin Hilt (solo at 25m), 5x Draconic Visage (34m,1.2m,1.2m) and various cs/ls/ffa Nex splits.
Drygore Drops: 7 Longswords, 3 Maces, 3 Rapiers, 3 Off-hand Rapiers,  5 Off-hand Maces, 3 Off-hand Longswords

ROTS Shields: 12  Seismics: 16

Ascension Crossbows: 6  Spider Legs: 10

Countless Armadyl armour pieces, Saradomin amulets, Dragon Hatchets, and Fremenik Rings.
Range~Herblore~Construction~Constitution~Defence~Farming~Magic~Attack~Prayer~Strength~Summoning~Slayer~Mining~Dungeoneering~Firemaking~Agility~Magic Mastery~Summoning Mastery~Cooking~Smithing~Fletching~Thieving~Hunter~Woodcutting~Fishing~Runecrafting

 

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kalphite king is fun

 

this attack sounds like vorago's main attack.

 

i think the best strategy would be to barricade and then abuse heal other to heal your whole team.

 

I don't see how that's the best idea when "Steve targets player with lowest health and instantly hits them for 1.5x damage (no cooldown) after which the attack continues as normal." If one team member isn't prepared or his full health isn't enough, wouldn't that kill the team member?

29386_s.gif

"Goals dont have a deadline." -xxxgod quoting Lady Shahdie

[slayer "Essentials"][click pic for main blog][click quote for mini blog][Worthwhile Auras]

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presumably you would have time to cast heal other in between barricading and steve actually hitting the other player. (seems like at least a 2 tick delay from him turning to him hitting instantly)

best drops (reasonably accurate/up to date): 1x Elysian Sigil (LS), 1x Arcane Sigil (cs), 4x Armadyl Hilt (solo at 100m, 100m, 50m, and 5m), 2x Saradomin Hilt (solo at 25m), 5x Draconic Visage (34m,1.2m,1.2m) and various cs/ls/ffa Nex splits.
Drygore Drops: 7 Longswords, 3 Maces, 3 Rapiers, 3 Off-hand Rapiers,  5 Off-hand Maces, 3 Off-hand Longswords

ROTS Shields: 12  Seismics: 16

Ascension Crossbows: 6  Spider Legs: 10

Countless Armadyl armour pieces, Saradomin amulets, Dragon Hatchets, and Fremenik Rings.
Range~Herblore~Construction~Constitution~Defence~Farming~Magic~Attack~Prayer~Strength~Summoning~Slayer~Mining~Dungeoneering~Firemaking~Agility~Magic Mastery~Summoning Mastery~Cooking~Smithing~Fletching~Thieving~Hunter~Woodcutting~Fishing~Runecrafting

 

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The damage reduction on armour feels artificial, because it's only for the KK boss fight. Maybe you could focus on the shield versus no shield distinction instead, and leave the power/tank armour balance as a problem to be fixed apart from the KK, because it's stupid in general.

Supporter of Zaros | Quest Cape owner since 22 may 2010 | No skills below 99 | Total level 2595 | Completionist Cape owner since 17th June 2013 | Suggestions

99 summoning (18th June 2011, previously untrimmed) | 99 farming (14th July 2011) | 99 prayer (8th September 2011) | 99 constitution (10th September 2011) | 99 dungeoneering (15th November 2011)

99 ranged (28th November 2011) | 99 attack, 99 defence, 99 strength (11th December 2011) | 99 slayer (18th December 2011) | 99 magic (22nd December 2011) | 99 construction (16th March 2012)

99 herblore (22nd March 2012) | 99 firemaking (26th March 2012) | 99 cooking (2nd July 2012) | 99 runecrafting (12th March 2012) | 99 crafting (26th August 2012) | 99 agility (19th November 2012)

99 woodcutting (22nd November 2012) | 99 fletching (31st December 2012) | 99 thieving (3rd January 2013) | 99 hunter (11th January 2013) | 99 mining (21st January 2013) | 99 fishing (21st January 2013)

99 smithing (21st January 2013) | 120 dungeoneering (17th June 2013) | 99 divination (24th November 2013)

Tormented demon drops: twenty effigies, nine pairs of claws, two dragon armour slices and one elite clue | Dagannoth king drops: two dragon hatchets, two elite clues, one archer ring and one warrior ring

Glacor drops: four pairs of ragefire boots, one pair of steadfast boots, six effigies, two hundred lots of Armadyl shards, three elite clues | Nex split: Torva boots | Kalphite King split: off-hand drygore mace

30/30 Shattered Heart statues completed | 16/16 Court Cases completed | 25/25 Choc Chimp Ices delivered | 500/500 Vyrewatch burned | 584/584 tasks completed | 4000/4000 chompies hunted

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