R12 Mastering the Glyph System and Defeating Challenge Dungeon Solo

Edit: as of 29 Nov 14, I've added my suggestions to the Devs in a separate post below. You can jump to the post through the link here.

Hi everyone! As briefly mentioned in my R12 Detailed Feedback post here, I'm following up on a comment I made about a strength / weakness of the Glyph System.

Using this system, I've managed to successfully complete the Challenge Dungeon alone - yes, alone and as a magic user, absolutely no heavy armour. This has been my personal challenge to overcome as a single avatar through the use of game mechanics. I used the Challenge Dungeon as my barometer of how using the Glyph System correctly, can lead to beating insurmountable odds.

So in the spirit of sharing this incredible PvE discovery for discussion (especially to the Devs): allow me to take you on a journey of what I've learned about the Glyph System and how you can transform yourself into an unstoppable juggernaut.

Please note that there are spoilers in the form of images at the end of the analysis. Actually, this entire post is a sort of giant spoiler in its own right.

How the Glyph System Works

The Glyph System is both complex and simple: complex in the sense that it always seems to throw you random cards, but actually it follows very simple rules of probability. Allow me to elaborate using a bag of coloured marbles (instead of cards for a change). Some of you will get this very easily or already understand it, so bear with me

You have a bag of 15 marbles, 5 are red, 5 are green, 5 are blue. You have 5 cups to fill with a marble each. What is the chance that you will get 1 red marble in each of the 5 cups?

In order of random draw from the bag

1. Draw 1: 5/15 chance to get a red marble
2. Draw 2: 4/14 chance to get a red marble
3. Draw 3: 3/13 chance to get a red marble
4. Draw 4: 2/12 chance to get a red marble
5. Draw 5: 1/11 chance to get a red marble

Likelihood that all 5 cups will all be filled with red marbles (in no particular order of cup / draw - we are spared permutation factors): 1 in 3003 chances - which is a near impossibility. This also means that you are most likely going to draw a blue or green marble on your 2nd or 3rd draw.

There is also another factor present, after a set amount of time, the cup will tip over and the marbles held will drop back into the bag it was drawn from. But never mind that for now.

TL: DR - The less of a marble/card you have in your hand, the higher its chances of appearing in your next draw. This is the basis for mastering the Glyph System. The bag of marbles functions exactly the same as how cards are drawn (or at least that's what I've understood) So now I will proceed on to the other factors of Glyph Combat:

1. The Glyph Bar
2. Glyph Draw Speed
3. Glyph Retention Speed
4. Glyph Modifiers: Mind Wipe and Mind Lock
5. Existing Quirks in the System
6. Assembling the Penultimate Deck

1. The Glyph Bar

Your glyph bar starts with 4 slots, you can progressively maximise this to a total of 9 slots. In this case, more slots is always a better thing. In the example above, if you had 9 cups to fill with a marble each, you would likely have more than half the bag of marbles out, and probably a 99+% chance of having at least one marble of each colour.

There is however, a trade-off point, that point is when cards fall out of your hand faster than your drawing speed. It also becomes very difficult to micromanage a set of fluid cards in the heat of battle.

TL: DR - Maximise your slots, but also ensure you increase your drawing speed so your hand can fill up.

2. Glyph Draw Speed

This is definitely the single most important skill in Glyph management. The faster you can draw cards, the faster you can either combine them or throw them out of your hand. The problem with high level Glyph combat is not really the Glyph System's fault, it's actually a human problem. We're not fast enough to fully maximise the speed at which these cards are utilised - A better user interface will help us understand the information more, but it's still the speed of us accessing their usage that is the key. This is where the Devs need to step in and create shortcuts for us to keep pace with the overflow of information and function.

TL: DR - The faster the better, till your hands and fingers get cramped. More at your disposal is better, always

3. Glyph Retention Speed

I believe this serves to mitigate our human slowness in processing information, you don't need a lot of this assistance at medium level Glyph combat, but if you're aiming to gain complete control over your Glyph System, you'll need to maximise this later on. From levels 10 - 30, you could easily do with Rank 3 in this skill.

TL: DR - Have a few ranks in this, not important till the higher stages.

4. Glyph Modifiers: Mind Wipe and Mind Lock

Mind Wipe - this is most useful if you are in a hurry to get a totally different set of cards. Its primary advantage is that you are instantly dealt a full hand on cast, you could indefinitely refresh full hands after full hands and skip the drawing process altogether.

Mind Lock - when used, all your currently held cards have a refreshed amount of time in your hand. this is probably the most under-rated skill in the Glyph System right now, but in actual fact, it is an unbelievably powerful factor when used correctly. You'll see in the final section of this review.

TL: DR - Mind Wipe, good for blitz attacks. Mind Lock - Part of the penultimate build below.

5. Existing Quirks in the Glyph System

I've previously reported in R11 (link here) that Glyph Combos could easily grant you free spells when combined correctly. This is especially true for lower level skills. Usually any combination of level 2 will cost you ZERO focus. Yes that's right, it's a free spell! Higher leveled skills may require combo level 3 or 4 to become zero focus.

TL: DR - Combo early, combo often, save your focus.

6. Assembling the Penultimate Deck

So bearing in mind all of these factors, I've assembled a deck that can see you through the challenge dungeon, or any combat scenario that allows you to prepare in advance. Going back to the bag of marbles:

Recall that we have 5 cups that tip over after some time. We also have 5 each of red, blue and green marbles. You are now able to combine marbles of the same colour into the same cup.

Now usually the cups will tip over before you run out of marbles to draw from the bag. But what happens if the cups no longer tip over? In this scenario, you will end up with 3 full cups of 5 same-coloured marbles and 2 empty cups. Here ladies and gentlemen, is the key to controlling your deck precisely the way you want it.

So, I'm going to jump into the specifics:

• At level 31+ you will have 25 card decks that must be filled or you will have deck slugs forced on you.
• If you constantly keep your cards refreshed in your hand, you will cumulatively stack all your cards until you have 5 stacks of 5 cards, and 4 empty slots (barring any armor slugs)
• You can then "release" one of the stacks of 5 at will, putting them back into the pool of undrawn cards
• Your next 5 draws will be 5/5 chance of the same cards being drawn (there are no other cards/marbles left, remember )

With card control in place, you can now use the quirk of the system:

1. Combine Glyphs into Level 2 or higher, costing you zero focus
2. Unleash a constant torrent of skill/spell fire

When your timer eventually is running out on Glyph Retention

1. Immediately combine your combat cards into a pile of 5
2. Release the stack of Mind Lock, refreshing your hand's longevity
3. Recombine the 5/5 drawn Mind Lock cards into a single stack
4. Unleash your Combat skills/spells

So why do I say it's penultimate deck and not ultimate? Simply because of two things:

1. It takes time to setup, but not too much of an issue with practice
2. We're Human. And this is the main issue - We have emotion in the heat of battle, we're not going to respond perfectly like a machine.

And now for some screenshots:


I hate spiders with a passion, revenge is sweet.



Divide and Conquer!



Climactic battle of the Lich Lords



The prize is mine, not wealth, but satisfaction of victory



What challenges await now?


I'm still shaking from the rush of victory

If anyone would like me to demonstrate for them, please drop me a message and I'll be happy to bring you around in game.

Aside to the Devs, I'll think of some suggestions later, I'm tired from typing for now

 

Awesome, man! I can't even get through 6 levels of that thing on my own.


Just to be clear, you're not a mage, you're a magic user.

How far does that build get you in PVP?
How far can you get through the challenge dungeon using Cloth Armor and Only Spells?

I want to make sure people that read this realize that it's not an example of magic being "fine" the way it is. It's an example of your exceptional abilities to min/max the current system.

 

You're absolutely right on the Magic User part (I was carrying a Shield and Sword afterall!) I'm not a true mage in that sense that I still added some physical blade damage. I augmented the natural attack rolls with close ranged magic.

In previous runs, I was still slain easily by the Lich Fighter, so in my last successful run (3rd run) I used a level 5 Ice Shield to decrease overall damage - this tipped the battle my favour and I was able to duo / trio some of the Lich Lords.

With regards to PvP - this is untested, I imagine that in PvP, you are battling a human brain and this will work far less than stellar when all the skills are properly balanced. The main advantage of this build is the ability to consistently cast high level spells with low focus. You still need a 5 second turnaround time to switch to another pure skill chain. If you decide to release two of the stacks, your effectiveness drops by 50%, but it is still manageable.

With regards to armour: I was in full light armour (I have a picture with my armour included above), the light armour was not completely balanced though: the Royal Founder Cloth Armour is ridiculously strong for light armour. The only difference would have been removing the sword and shield, this would have made it more difficult and slower, but not necessarily impossible.

And yes, there is a huge degree of min/maxing the system to tilt the odds in my favour!

 

So you are basically arranging glyphs before combat and during all the combat time right? Do you think you will have any chance in PVP? People wont stand still in front of you waiting your spells like mobs do.

 

You are correct that this build has a PvP weakness. I've stated that it needs prep time, so it is weakest in duel mode. The aim of my post was really to highlight a character of the current Glyph System that could be transformed both positively and negatively.

I've got an idea about PvP testing though, I'll leave that for much later

 

First, really great analysis, I love me some maths. Cheers for putting in the time and the effort.

One point of contention:

Your chance of that happening is actually ZERO.

You only HAVE 5 red marbles. You can't ever get 5 red marbles in all 5 cups, that would imply you have 25 red marbles =p

IOW: "What is the chance you will get a red marble in each of the 5 cups?"

Cheers.

 

This is another reason why standing around in combat mode MUST drain focus.

People are going to "load up" in PVP and then charge in before other people are even in combat mode. Is this a smart tactic? Sure! But how many people will enjoy that fight? Just the guy charging in.

 

EDITED November 26th

This system works. However it needs some game mechanic updates to simplify and reduce the drawbacks

This solution is a fix using current R12 combat system for mages, but something else needs to happen in the future to simplify things.

• Mind lock to permanently lock glyphs
• quick auto stack/auto combo shortcuts, and
• the ability to move stacked glyphs to an open slot to enhance this prep work and organize our deck

Very useful applications of this system:

• Repairing and organizing your skills. (improvement would be if we could move stacked skills to an open slot for better organization)
• Spells doing more damage and costing less focus.
• Grants the ability to put more glyphs in the deck than the minimum... although the auto stacking and mind lock improvements are needed.

I've been playing with this system extensively the past few days. I think there may be potential especially if there are some type of auto stack options for deck users to help reduce micromanaging. Then this system could be fully useful in PvP too.

EDIT: Although this allows a mage to have more than the minimum deck size and still be effective, but it is slow because you are gathering and stacking... I don't think warriors can get away micromanaging their skills like this (until there is an auto stack/combo), and PvPers won't have time to micromanage their decks when they are attacked out of the blue. So this really is good for having a very high level versatile mage for healing and crowd control in a party unless we get some kind of auto stack/combo shortcuts.

Also we need mind lock to permanently lock glyphs until they are used or something resets our glyphs like changing equipment.

With some additions to the existing system I would want to play a mage using this kind of system.

 

Good post. Well structured and detailed.

One thing I never figured out was stacking. Just not had enough play time devoted to mastering all of sota. Even some basic stuff I just don't know.

When you say "Likelihood" did you mean "Probability" ? The 1 in 3003 chances makes it sound like a probability. I still get confused with likelihood because I don't use it that often.

 

I find Sundsword analysis very impressive, but at the same time is the evidence what kind of combat system we have right now, a card game.
I still think that Deck management is too cumbersome and unpleasant, having to manually arrange glyphs while in combat seems a bit dull.

I cant even stand trying to create combos, and looking at my Deck in PVP it simply sounds crazy to me.

 

Darn! I knew I was going to make a mistake somewhere, thanks for pointing it out, I'll correct it now

 

Yes that is correct. Sorry I use these words very interchangeably, but my intent was the same as "probability"

 

I've kept using this system. It worked successfully although even with stacked glyphs it was difficult to manage more than 30 cards. So I kept my deck to 27. It worked well in the challenge dungeon. I think it is the only way a mage can sort of keep up with other skill sets at this point. Something still needs to evolve because I couldn't type to anybody due to being preoccupied with my deck. thankfully we had a TS3 chat going but even then I couldn't communicate much because I was very focused on my deck.

Good post. Regardless of my criticism the system does work. I stand by what I said about micromanaging though. I hope the devs make it so that we don't have to be so anal about our glyphs.

 

Powerful analysis, thanks for posting.
I do hope the system can get a revamp, as I do not want to just focusing on my skill bar during my game play.
I hope it does not just come down to micromanagement and statistic crunching during a fight.

 

I took a little while to think about your post and finally got around to it!

The deck can actually be comprised of non-death magic, death magic merely makes you more survivable as you deal and heal damage at the same time. Another combination that I used was flame fist and healing touch: it is still possible to accurately control two different types of glyphs. As long as your undrawn pool is a nice split of 50-50, your odds of getting a balanced hand in the empty slots are still fairly good.

I absolutely agree that there's too much micromanaging of the Glyph System as it stands. When I'm using this form of Glyph deck, I'm completely blind to all activity around me and cannot do anything other than manage the hot bar (and occasionally glance at my health bar). I also agree that stacking should go away!

This Glyph deck would not work with fighters at current, because armour slugs are still present and would choke up the empty slots. I imagine in the future when armor slugs are removed altogether, the situation will actually worsen.

In my next post to this thread, I have a suggestion for the Devs, hopefully it'll be useful for their consideration!

 

Is Ice shield so good you are taking no damage or am I missing something? My chat is usually full of posts me taking ridiculous amount of damage even when I fight lonely Lich.

 

I can handle most things with my tank (plate/shield) and blade build except the Lich mages. All my damage resistance and avoidance seems useless. Any help with what takes those bad boys down?

 

Yes that's right! Ice Shield level 5 gives +15 avoidance (or was it +10)? I could almost completely negate all damage from a Lich Archer and Lich Mage. Occasionally I would get hit for 10+ damage, but with a quick heal, that is easily removed.

The only thing dangerous enough to break through Damage Avoidance was the Lich Fighter, it can still critical for 50-100!

It appears to me that Damage Avoidance > Damage Resistance. The first pass of damage seems to go through avoidance first, a higher level and investment into Sympathy of Stone is quite important. Eventually you will reach the "tipping point". I'm not sure if the calculation of damage is like a bell curve, but it certainly felt that way for me.

It might also be possible that cloth armor has some inherent bonus versus magical damage. Let me test and find out!

 

I thought about this for a while and I think I know what would resolve my stress issue with this system.

If the mind lock skill could lock the skills indefinitely, then I wouldn't have the stress of micromanaging my skills. In fact the only skill that would refresh would be the mind lock glyph you used. (I tend to stack all my mindlocks in one stack and one separate mind lock by itself so I don't have to deal with lots of glyphs.)

However if the mindlock skill would lock all the other glyphs indefinitely then I won't always be on edge worrying about having to keep clicking on mindlock or all the glyphs I previously stacked will all fade away when I stop paying attention.

There were a few times where I was fighting and all of sudden my glyphs started fading before I realized what was going on and then I had a mess of cards on my hands and I had no way to recover from that and I ended up getting killed. ... I also stacked my 5 fire arrows and 5 death rays to create the combo, and I didn't use it because it didn't give good enough results to justify the time and energy of gathering all ten glyphs again.

So it would be nice if once a skill is locked it stays that way until you use it. Then we can feel safe typing to my guild members.

 

You are a forgive my words *&^($%@ Genius. Awesome find on one of the most powerful bugs in the game I know you don't call it a bug but this is GAME CHANGING