FrogComPos Filthy Rags

[Seraphimus]

What's the best way to do something about the Damage of the filthy rags? As it stands it's extremely hard to get brands/slays with no weapons and that's to be expected but on top of this they don't benefit at all from absorbing the nicer unenchanted gloves with attack and damage bonuses.(which I'm mixed about, I feel like this would get out of control late game but early game is disappointing)

This is amplified by them having no proficiency scaling either so as early as level 10 they start to hit a wall where only a single very specific ego drop that's not exactly common can help them overcome in any way. Yeah, they get pretty tough with high Early AC and will inevitably get high resist pips for everything but it feels like it's impossible to get to the depths that the things they need are dropping because they can't hit anything and even when they do hit stuff they do no damage.

is there an ideal depth, dungeon, town, or place to farm gloves of slaying? and do others like me feel this monster race needs some kind of in built accuracy or damage scaling(like most of the monster races get) so they can get past the very early game without grinding for eternity?

[arch]

With my Munchkin rag, I used devices for early damage. If you have levitation, sneak into Dragon's lair, otherwise try Castle.

[Sideways]

I probably ought to add some new mechanic for rags to discourage the grinding-for-eternity approach. Maybe they should deteriorate over time, or the Emu-Lord should show up and throw them into the deep end if they try too hard to stay out of it.

Yeah, offensive devices are a good source of early damage.

[emulord]

XD thanks for the shoutout. Yeah I carry a lot of wands, usually even taking a personality that improves devices.

To grind for gear I like abusing low damage enemies that drop lots of gear. p,o,O,P,T,h are good choices. You want to avoid burst damage and summoners because theres no way to clear up a mess with your low sustained damage output.

Potions of speed are incredible for a low level rag.

To avoid encouraging bad behavior, maybe have caps on effective bonuses until you reach a higher dungeon level? I know the way death swords prevent it is by reqiring more essences at higher combat form, maybe a similar situation can be done with rags. Dullahans and such.

[Seraphimus]

I probably ought to add some new mechanic for rags to discourage the grinding-for-eternity approach. Maybe they should deteriorate over time, or the Emu-Lord should show up and throw them into the deep end if they try too hard to stay out of it.

Yeah, offensive devices are a good source of early damage.

Honestly having played more I will admit damage isn't the problem, somewhere since the last time I tried one, their damage has been fixed, I also forgot about the chest egos that give damage in Frogband, So they hit hard enough, Accuracy is still a big problem though as most of those egos consistently roll with negative to hit mods so finding positive ones is rare.

that said there are 2 definitive problems that make the class really unfun and excessively grindy and I have pieced together what they are.

The first is the massive but extremely slow scaling, Like I was level 45 before I got my first rfear, and even at dungeon level 60 and dropping I still have no Hold life, and have just broken the AC I'd expect a human fighter to hit around level 35. It takes too long to get the basics but if you keep going you will inevitably become nearly immune to most things, I will admit to having well over 70% to all my low resists. don't punish people for grinding, Lower the cap on how many levels of resists you can get from a single piece of gear.

The second is a problem that is actually present for all characters but only so significantly noticeable for Filthy Rags characters (attachment provided for visual evidence). the problem, is that Enchanted Gloves and boots, Especially ones with Egos on them, Don't drop. this leads to struggling to meet resists until you get very deep and get them all at once, and AC lagging behind constantly on the mimic class that should have the easiest time with AC if nothing else.

Statistically, If it was just bad luck, I would eventually see some kind of turn around where things balance back out, but the longer I play the farther and farther ahead my chest piece gets whilst my gloves and boots are largely ornamental (save for speed boosts and a handful of specific things most of which I didn't start to get til well after I hit Clvl 50.) The fact is, I didn't realize it til I played the rags this long but every character I have played in frog has their choice of quality armor uniques and egos, but struggles to find anything better than a single pair of early levitation boots until speed boots start dropping. I'll frequently have a unique or ego Dragon scale mail long before I have a strong pair of boots, and outside a couple specific early uniques like Cammithrim I basically never find good gloves. the thing with this is I can't imagine a fix for this that doesn't require completely re-balancing loot drops and likely creating more boot and glove egos (Gloves of slaying and boots of speed dropping at earlier depths would be crazy)

As it stands I feel the best way to balance their progression would be lower caps on single piece resists and making it easier to get first level of a given resist on more pieces but harder to get successive resists, this would help streamline the early grinding making the class less of a slog at low levels while capping how powerful they can get in many regards avoiding 80-90% resist all moments but making it more likely to have at your key Rfear RConf RBlind and Hold Life before breaking level 50 and Dlvl 60

Edit: Fixing screenshot so it's readable

Edit 2: and yeah the Rags is probably the first class I've played where all the damage wand quests rewards see good use before being sold as opposed to dumped right away because I already have something better.