On The Jabberwock

[Iron_Foot]

Let’s consult Wikipedia.

“Jabberwocky” is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, a sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The book tells of Alice’s adventures within the back-to-front world of a looking glass.
In an early scene in which she first encounters the chess piece characters White King and White Queen, Alice finds a book written in a seemingly unintelligible language. Realising that she is travelling through an inverted world, she recognises that the verse on the pages are written in mirror-writing. She holds a mirror to one of the poems, and reads the reflected verse of “Jabberwocky”. She finds the nonsense verse as puzzling as the odd land she has passed into, later revealed as a dreamscape.[1]
“Jabberwocky” is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English.[2][3] Its playful, whimsical language has given us nonsense words and neologisms such as “galumphing” and “chortle”.

So that, I guess.

[KA101]

I think that they are from Alice in wonderland. Correct me if I am wrong.

Originally Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, then probably the most PitA boss in the Alice third-person shooter.

[Iron_Foot]

Contains spoilers about Hulks and Jabbers.

[spoiler]Alright so via cheating I just spawned one with the intention to teleport away if it got too sour. However I managed to kill it with far less issues and via chatlog have found it has between 385 and 411 health. Knowing cataclysm it’s probably 400 so they can take a lot of abuse.

Their corpse has a volume of 600 and a weight of 4000, so they’re as big and as heavy as a Zombie Hulk corpse.

Similarly to Hulks they drop leather when butchered, however they also drop edible meat and sinew.[/spoiler]

[subsequence]

Ok, I’m new at this game. Can anyone recommend how to deal with them? Especially early on. I’ve had 3 promising new characters killed by them so far, even the one with a MAC-10. It seems like as soon as one randomly enters my field of view I’m just dead. They’re too tough to kill and too fast to run away from, even with Fleet-Footed.

[i2amroy]

In cataclysm however, Jabberwocks are a huge flesh golem made out of humand and animal parts and with lots of writhing faces; they probably look something like this:

[acidia]

Honest question time… and more about the creatures than you will probably want to know…

When I was adding these I was a little uncertain of how the community would respond. They were, like the npc mission alludes to, a counter to the ‘raid at night’ live in the woods strategy. As long as you only stick to a small patch of woods then the danger of encountering one is relatively low. It is when you have a new character and are covering large amounts of wooded/swap territory that it becomes an issue. Pretty much it was to curb stomp ‘elves’ who run about with their little bows until they have enough skill to slaughter entire towns of normal zombies.

Jabberwock is the animal/human “flesh golem” but what would you think about encountering Legion which is the pure human “flesh golem”… Jabberwock is sinewy and lean while Legion would be massive and slow. Both have the advantage of multiple ‘heads’ integrated into their body so they have more HP than a typical zombie of comparable size… but Legion would be designed to counter vehicles.

Storyline wise, the flesh golems arise from the mass graves and corpse pits where the biological matter became inseparable and simply fuzed corpses together.

As a hint, the best counter to them is probably running straight into town or a building… they stop to destroy walls and can lose your trail while doing so.

Although it offers a fun challenge, ya’ll don’t really think it is excessive now do you?

[timtek]

Personally I’ve lost two characters to jabberwocks. Both less than a week old. They are currently my most feared mob. One simply spawned near my shelter. The other one I tried via the NPC quest. Those things are fearsome and crazy tough for low levs. But they’re also kinda fun because of that. They do feel overpowered but I don’t think they should be nerfed.

[100Rads]

To easily evade them, take the Quick trait, find some Adderall, and when you see one, pop 3 pills and run away. Their speed is about 140, and this gives you speed about 150. I’ve escaped at least 7 of them this way.

[Senrain]

To easily evade them, take the Quick trait, find some Adderall, and when you see one, pop 3 pills and run away. Their speed is about 140, and this gives you speed about 150. I’ve escaped at least 7 of them this way.

You can just carefully cut through a forest so it gets caught on trees and shrubs and can’t catch up too.

[Vorpal2]

If I can easily take a Jabberwock in melee, it’s a good indication that I have a very solid melee build.

The ~140 speed makes them very nasty for a new player. At that speed if one is running after you in mostly open ground, you’re forced to engage. Unless you have a very solid build and the gear to back it up, game over.

It is vulnerable to fire, although atm fire seems pretty OP when it slows them down. Especially for a forest monster, vulnerability to fire seems good though.

Perhaps it’s the spawn rate on them that is a bit high? I generally expect to see at least 1 if I’m going through any decent forest. I’m a pessimist though

[KA101]

[quote=“acidia, post:15, topic:1878”]Honest question time… and more about the creatures than you will probably want to know…

When I was adding these I was a little uncertain of how the community would respond. They were, like the npc mission alludes to, a counter to the ‘raid at night’ live in the woods strategy. As long as you only stick to a small patch of woods then the danger of encountering one is relatively low. It is when you have a new character and are covering large amounts of wooded/swap territory that it becomes an issue. Pretty much it was to curb stomp ‘elves’ who run about with their little bows until they have enough skill to slaughter entire towns of normal zombies.

Jabberwock is the animal/human “flesh golem” but what would you think about encountering Legion which is the pure human “flesh golem”… Jabberwock is sinewy and lean while Legion would be massive and slow. Both have the advantage of multiple ‘heads’ integrated into their body so they have more HP than a typical zombie of comparable size… but Legion would be designed to counter vehicles.

Storyline wise, the flesh golems arise from the mass graves and corpse pits where the biological matter became inseparable and simply fuzed corpses together.

As a hint, the best counter to them is probably running straight into town or a building… they stop to destroy walls and can lose your trail while doing so.

Although it offers a fun challenge, ya’ll don’t really think it is excessive now do you?[/quote]

I don’t mind the possibility of fighting Legion–would be interesting to see a Castlevania reference. What I do mind is
a) Corpse Pits at last check aren’t actually flammable (I expected them to be flammable ), so having things spawn from them (even if only in flavor-text) seems chintzy.
b) Critters being added specifically to counter X strategy gets really irritating–it’s an incentive to not discuss working strategies because some jackhole dev will screw it up. I didn’t appreciate Smokers countering melee, and I don’t appreciate Jabberwocks being designed to counter survivalists. To the degree that Legion would be designed to punish Deathmobiles, I oppose it.
c) A critter with a magic knockdown ability (anyone know if it trumps Judo?) seems excessive, not fun. The possibility of having one show within week 1? here’s hoping I didn’t like that map anyway.

Re fire as “OP”: Uh, it kills you pretty good if you get in it. I don’t think fire needs any sort of nerf.

[Stevensonz]

[quote=“KA101, post:20, topic:1878”][quote=“acidia, post:15, topic:1878”]Honest question time… and more about the creatures than you will probably want to know…

When I was adding these I was a little uncertain of how the community would respond. They were, like the npc mission alludes to, a counter to the ‘raid at night’ live in the woods strategy. As long as you only stick to a small patch of woods then the danger of encountering one is relatively low. It is when you have a new character and are covering large amounts of wooded/swap territory that it becomes an issue. Pretty much it was to curb stomp ‘elves’ who run about with their little bows until they have enough skill to slaughter entire towns of normal zombies.

Jabberwock is the animal/human “flesh golem” but what would you think about encountering Legion which is the pure human “flesh golem”… Jabberwock is sinewy and lean while Legion would be massive and slow. Both have the advantage of multiple ‘heads’ integrated into their body so they have more HP than a typical zombie of comparable size… but Legion would be designed to counter vehicles.

Storyline wise, the flesh golems arise from the mass graves and corpse pits where the biological matter became inseparable and simply fuzed corpses together.

As a hint, the best counter to them is probably running straight into town or a building… they stop to destroy walls and can lose your trail while doing so.

Although it offers a fun challenge, ya’ll don’t really think it is excessive now do you?[/quote]

I don’t mind the possibility of fighting Legion–would be interesting to see a Castlevania reference. What I do mind is
a) Corpse Pits at last check aren’t actually flammable (I expected them to be flammable ), so having things spawn from them (even if only in flavor-text) seems chintzy.
b) Critters being added specifically to counter X strategy gets really irritating–it’s an incentive to not discuss working strategies because some jackhole dev will screw it up. I didn’t appreciate Smokers countering melee, and I don’t appreciate Jabberwocks being designed to counter survivalists. To the degree that Legion would be designed to punish Deathmobiles, I oppose it.
c) A critter with a magic knockdown ability (anyone know if it trumps Judo?) seems excessive, not fun. The possibility of having one show within week 1? here’s hoping I didn’t like that map anyway.

Re fire as “OP”: Uh, it kills you pretty good if you get in it. I don’t think fire needs any sort of nerf.[/quote]

There’s nothing wrong with additional-counters to add a new challenge and difficulty to the game otherwise if the game becomes too easy or easy to abuse you get bored with it. Also Jabberwocks are really easy to escape from as long as you don’t get knocked down from their roar and traits like parkour expert,quick helps (Not sure if poor hearing will save you from it’s roar or a higher int) and wise movement tactics to delay them they are still stupid so yeah.

[Bladerock]

Designing monsters to specifically counter a strategy that is being “abused” instead of dealing with the cause, is bad game design. It leads to relying on it as a crutch to shut down “unwanted” player advancement, which leads to side effects and railroading. The only way you can advance is the devs want and there is no choice in the matter. Which leads to the fact that a developer has full control over the game in the first place and can simply disallow the unwanted behaviour if it is troublesome enough to design counters to it. It is better to make it clear for the player that “No, you can’t do this.” rather than devise “traps” to kill off players “abusing” the game.

In the end, I am not sure what a new player is expected to do anymore. Going to the city is supposed to get them killed in the early game, so zombies keep getting buffed. But, going to the wilderness is now supposed to get them killed in the early game too, so powerful monsters are being placed there.

There should be relatively safe areas where a new player can fight monsters, loot and learn the game. As walking out of your shelter and being instantly mauled unless you are experienced enough to know all the little exploits is not conductive to getting said experience.

That being said, the jabberidon’tcare isn’t really crossing the line. I’m just venting at what seems like a very bad direction.

[Stevensonz]

[quote=“Bladerock, post:22, topic:1878”]Designing monsters to specifically counter a strategy that is being “abused” instead of dealing with the cause, is bad game design. It leads to relying on it as a crutch to shut down “unwanted” player advancement, which leads to side effects and railroading. The only way you can advance is the devs want and there is no choice in the matter. Which leads to the fact that a developer has full control over the game in the first place and can simply disallow the unwanted behaviour if it is troublesome enough to design counters to it. It is better to make it clear for the player that “No, you can’t do this.” rather than devise “traps” to kill off players “abusing” the game.

In the end, I am not sure what a new player is expected to do anymore. Going to the city is supposed to get them killed in the early game, so zombies keep getting buffed. But, going to the wilderness is now supposed to get them killed in the early game too, so powerful monsters are being placed there.

There should be relatively safe areas where a new player can fight monsters, loot and learn the game. As walking out of your shelter and being instantly mauled unless you are experienced enough to know all the little exploits is not conductive to getting said experience.

That being said, the jabberidon’tcare isn’t really crossing the line. I’m just venting at what seems like a very bad direction.[/quote]

The Jabberwock is made much much rarer now in the nightly version unless you have a mission for it because it pops up every-time there is a huge patch/ decent patch of forests, also Cataclysm isn’t an easy game like some RNG’s are and not to mention RNG games have that it’s not fair I died to X reason and most RNG’s are hard or unfair at the start.

It only becomes easy when you die a lot of times to learn the game and become experienced so playing it for the first time being new unless your some genius or have survival knowledge then you will last a lot longer than most new players will.

on a side note look how easy it is to abuse zombies by using a smashed single window and killing a horde by abusing that window in a real situation the zombies would push each other inside so it will only buy you a little time before they all surround you. (don’t know when this will get fixed though)

[Bladerock]

Just reduce the window penalty to movement to 150-200. Fixed. Alternatively, some monsters really need to look for alternate ways to reach you rather than piling up behind the other ones (walk around the house until they find another window/door to climb in through.)

[prytoclasm]

Met three Jabberwocks so far, all three died by frames that smashed into them with around 70 mph.

So far, best strategy to survive for me is: find something for storage, get 2 - 4 emtpy bottles, find a gas station or mine entrance, fuel up, find a car with working engine and get the hell away from everything.

After that’s done: find a nail gun or a gun shop that’s not in the center of town.

Anything else: Oh, a Jabberwock, let’s drive through!

I’m not really a stationary person. Clearing towns or living in the woods for weeks = not my style. So, if you ask me, Jabberwocks can stay as they are.

[KA101]

Full disclosure: I don’t play the nightlies because I’m fond of my characters and don’t like to find bugs the hard way. The problems with inventory items getting assigned the same letter have been enough to scare me off: I make a lot of Clean Water and don’t look forward to having to go thirsty come day 5.

There’s nothing wrong with additional-counters to add a new challenge and difficulty to the game otherwise if the game becomes too easy or easy to abuse you get bored with it. Also Jabberwocks are really easy to escape from as long as you don’t get knocked down from their roar and traits like parkour expert,quick helps (Not sure if poor hearing will save you from it’s roar or a higher int) and wise movement tactics to delay them they are still stupid so yeah.

“Abuse” is subjective, as is “too easy”. Not everyone can put hours on end into the game, so what’s “too easy” to you may be rather exciting already to me. Unfortunately, you’re hitting on a basic problem of open-source roguelike development: the players who spend lots & lots of time on the game 1) rapidly skill up, 2) get bored & demand greater challenge, 3) get their demands resolved, 4) GOTO 1. Over time, this cycle makes the game increasingly difficult for new players to enter, as Bladerock discussed.

IIRC the Jabberwock has 140 base speed, which makes it 40 points faster than a typical human such as the starting character. In a loose forest, yeah, maybe an experienced or desperate player could kite it and escape. In a dense forest, I’d imagine that one would eventually run into a wall of 7s and be forced into melee. Vorpal2’s already indicated that successfully melee-ing a Jabberwock implies that the character’s pretty optimized for melee, and you can’t ask all characters to focus on melee skills. As for the roar: Amigara Horrors are tough-but-doable if you can avoid getting paralyzed. But that doesn’t make them suitable for dumping on new characters.

Asking players to take chargen-only traits to counter one critter implies to me that the critter is pretty stanging powerful.

Re driving-as-the-only-weapon: Yeah, and that’s why acidia wants to make an upgraded version. X-(

Proposed solution: Jabberwocks & their NPC missions to spawn only after 1-2 seasons (so Summer/Fall, year 1). This way, starting characters don’t get clobbered, but the woods* eventually become Dangerous.

*Since Jabberwocks come from mass graves, etc, it might be a good idea to associate them with FEMA camps–currently the only location of mass graves–and charge the zed pool a fairly hefty amount for them. An Ominously Empty Area could be a good way to tip players off.

[ted]

[quote=“acidia, post:15, topic:1878”]Honest question time… and more about the creatures than you will probably want to know…

When I was adding these I was a little uncertain of how the community would respond. They were, like the npc mission alludes to, a counter to the ‘raid at night’ live in the woods strategy. As long as you only stick to a small patch of woods then the danger of encountering one is relatively low. It is when you have a new character and are covering large amounts of wooded/swap territory that it becomes an issue. Pretty much it was to curb stomp ‘elves’ who run about with their little bows until they have enough skill to slaughter entire towns of normal zombies.

Jabberwock is the animal/human “flesh golem” but what would you think about encountering Legion which is the pure human “flesh golem”… Jabberwock is sinewy and lean while Legion would be massive and slow. Both have the advantage of multiple ‘heads’ integrated into their body so they have more HP than a typical zombie of comparable size… but Legion would be designed to counter vehicles.

Storyline wise, the flesh golems arise from the mass graves and corpse pits where the biological matter became inseparable and simply fuzed corpses together.

As a hint, the best counter to them is probably running straight into town or a building… they stop to destroy walls and can lose your trail while doing so.

Although it offers a fun challenge, ya’ll don’t really think it is excessive now do you?[/quote]

It’s hardly excessive, but I think it’s pretty boring. It’s just a tough monster that you really don’t want to melee. It dies pretty easily to a good ranged attack, although that’s hardly its own fault. I do like that the high speed and situational roaring makes it easy to keep it at a distance, but hard to outright outrun.

I’m fine with hard counters, but I don’t think this one is well-suited to your purpose. In my opinion, the strategy you want to counter would be better addressed by making weapon type more important than skill when it comes to doing damage. It would also be important to somehow make kiting and funneling techniques more dangerous, so that a weapon that kills monsters quickly is more than just a timesaver.

“Abuse” is subjective, as is “too easy”. Not everyone can put hours on end into the game, so what’s “too easy” to you may be rather exciting already to me. Unfortunately, you’re hitting on a basic problem of open-source roguelike development: the players who spend lots & lots of time on the game 1) rapidly skill up, 2) get bored & demand greater challenge, 3) get their demands resolved, 4) GOTO 1. Over time, this cycle makes the game increasingly difficult for new players to enter, as Bladerock discussed.

It’s not really a problem. Most commercial single-player games bend over backwards catering to both new and challenge-averse players.

[Mate]

Am I the only one, who hasn’t yet been killed by a jabberwocks? Before I have a vehicle, as soon as I see it I turn around. After, well… I just run it over. A vehicle is THE priority to me.

[system]

What the hell are jabberwocks supposed to do? Stop survivalist builds?

Seems rather counter-intuitive as that is the only way to live long term. Since the game crashes with too big of maps.