Minimum required to kill a Triffid heart?

[LazyCat]

What would be the minimum requirements in terms of skills, items and days required, to kill one Triffid heart?

I think it would be hard to do it in less than five days simply because you’d need that time to get yours skills high enough, no matter what kind of character you create at the beginning. Not sure, what do you think?

What would be the best strategy to do it in the least amount of time, what kind of character would you create, what items would you look for, what weapons would you use and what skills would you seek to improve?

[halberdsturgeon]

I have absolutely no idea how many days it would take to prepare yourself to deal with a triffid heart, because there are so many random variables involved in establishing a character. It depends on what the game gives you to work with.

But the best (read: least risk) way I’ve found to kill a triffid heart is with teargas. If you have an excess of teargas canisters and a gas mask you could theoretically do it without a single point in any combat skill, but that’s not entirely practical*. Either way, you need to be able to fight your way into the grove and through the triffid roots sublevel to the triffid heart, and then realistically you want to have a way of breaking down walls to get to the heart itself. That means explosives, a jackhammer or sonic resonator, in ascending order of effectiveness. Sonic resonator makes the entire thing a cakewalk, just slip on your mask, activate a teargas canister and wander towards the beating of the heart knocking down every wall in your way - any triffids that come near you will be stunned and killed in short order and you can chuck another canister into the heart chamber when you reach it.

*I had a momentary lapse and forgot that you could actually create teargas with cooking at 4 and mechanics at 1. Ha. Well, there you, go, then - you need a bunch of bleach, ammonia, tin cans and water, a gas mask, and sonic resonator or a jackhammer. Go to it.

[LazyCat]

I have absolutely no idea how many days it would take to prepare yourself to deal with a triffid heart, because there are so many random variables involved in establishing a character. It depends on what the game gives you to work with.

The best strategy should take random factors into account as well. If the strategy involves finding rare items, then perhaps it’s not the best strategy there is.

But the best (read: least risk) way I've found to kill a triffid heart is with teargas. If you have an excess of teargas canisters and a gas mask you could theoretically do it without a single point in any combat skill, [s]but that's not entirely practical[/s]*. Either way, you need to be able to fight your way into the grove and through the triffid roots sublevel to the triffid heart, and then realistically you want to have a way of breaking down walls to get to the heart itself. That means explosives, a jackhammer or sonic resonator, in ascending order of effectiveness. Sonic resonator makes the entire thing a cakewalk, just slip on your mask, activate a teargas canister and wander towards the beating of the heart knocking down every wall in your way - any triffids that come near you will be stunned and killed in short order and you can chuck another canister into the heart chamber when you reach it.

*I had a momentary lapse and forgot that you could actually create teargas with cooking at 4 and mechanics at 1. Ha. Well, there you, go, then - you need a bunch of bleach, ammonia, tin cans and water, a gas mask, and sonic resonator or a jackhammer. Go to it.

Amazing. It would never occur to me to use tear gas, and that’s what I like about this game. How did you come up with that? What does tear gas do to them? Perhaps you could write a little guide for the wiki.

My greatest problems were those spreading vines, and I found firearms and explosives to be useless there, even explosive slugs, the walls just close too fast when you explode them. The best tactic I found is to use katana. The walls were not fully closing when I did not explode them and I managed to take the heart down by using nothing else, except first aids and drugs of course. Maybe it was just luck.

Thanks for the tear-gas tip, I’m looking forward to try it out. Do you have more tips like that, where something rather useless in most case scenarios works well on some specific type of monster or in some particular situation?

[halberdsturgeon]

Amazing. It would never occur to me to use tear gas, and that’s what I like about this game. How did you come up with that? What does tear gas do to them? Perhaps you could write a little guide for the wiki.

It stuns them so that they can’t move as soon as they come into contact with it, and inflicts heavy damage on them round by round until they die. It works on every kind of triffid in the game as far as I can tell, including the heart itself. I found triffid hearts to be the most challenging areas in the game before I started using teargas; now they’re no problem at all as long as I have a safe way of breaking down the root walls.

I definitely can’t take credit for thinking of trying teargas against triffids on my own, I must have read it somewhere at some point. Possibly here on the forum, I’m not sure.

My greatest problems were those spreading vines, and I found firearms and explosives to be useless there, even explosive slugs, the walls just close too fast when you explode them.

Teargas kills both the vines and creeper hubs. It kills the hubs, but not the vines. If you’re a good marksman you can shoot past the vines to the hub without too much difficulty, but it’s not ideal and the hub may be around a corner with vines flooding the only approach. I used to use guns against triffids. I found using melee against the vines tends to involve taking a lot of damage. I’d never go back to using bombs to clear out the heart, it’s too dangerous and imprecise.

Thanks for the tear-gas tip, I’m looking forward to try it out. Do you have more tips like that, where something rather useless in most case scenarios works well on some specific type of monster or in some particular situation?

Teargas is really the most situational weapon in the game that I can think of. Setting triffid queens on fire is also fun to watch, but fire is useful in a lot of situations.

[KA101]

Huh. I just released a Triffid HQ page for the wiki last night/this morning. Hadn’t known Triffids were affected by tear gas; would be one good use for the cans.

Question: does gassing the Heart get it to open up the roots on death? Flaming it to death didn’t, but I’m not sure if that code’s conditional on there being no way out.

Update: Added a link to this on the Triffid HQ page.

[halberdsturgeon]

The collapsing roots isn’t conditional, it’ll happen even if you’re a level up from the heart. It triggers when the heart is gassed to death. I thought it triggered no matter how the heart died, surprised that fire would break it.

[LazyCat]

When I used katana only the walls were not closing completely either before or after I sliced the heart. Perhaps what it does is related to noise, temperature, presence of gas and other such factors. Maybe it was designed with intention to be taken down with melee weapons, and so using anything else incurs the penalty of closing walls. Which I think would be cool since I suppose everyone first attempt would involve firearms, fire and explosives.

In any case Triffid heart is an example of brilliant game design, it’s the best thing I ever saw in any roguelike, by far. I mean using dynamic terrain in such an interesting way to set up the challenge for the stage, pure genius. And whatever strategy was intended to be the most effective it’s certainly not very obvious, which is great, but just even the very fact more than one weapon and strategy can be used, making for different gameplay on the same stage, I think is one of the brightest highlights of this game.

[TheRealTenman]

…but just even the very fact more than one weapon and strategy can be used, making for different gameplay on the same stage…

Nuke with nukes
Nuke with lesser explosives
Nuke with Fire
Nuke with gas
Nuke with guns
Bash with melee.

Aka Hurt it till it dies

[Iosyn]

hm, I’m not such a monster that I’d use gas on–

ah, it’s only tear gas anyway. (= 3 =) y¬–~
Kinda can’t believe triffids have such a weaksauce weakness, but to be real honest I’ve never head of triffids before Cata.