Math and the Battledome by beatzero3 |  |
BATTLEDOME - The Battledome is a world teeming with mathematics that happen
right before your very eyes, without you even thinking about it. There's a secret,
special formula that calculates how much damage your Neopet and his or her opponent
will each do based on the strength of each combatant, the amount of icons they
do, and any defensive, healing, or generative items or abilities they choose
to use. Remember that not strength but what's called the "X Factor," which is
derived from strength, is put into the actual formula. This article will tell
you how to think about these mathematical principles, making you a better player.
You should be able to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and round numbers to
use these strategies-preferably, in your head.
Take, for example, the renowned and feared Faerie ability, Life Drain. It
takes about 11%, or roughly 1/9, of your opponent's Current Hit Points, and
heals you by the same amount of Hit Points. It will only do this to a point-100
HP. There's a LOT of math in trying to anticipate the effects of this technique,
so get ready! Say that you are fighting Punchbag Bob, who has 100 Current Hit
Points in this scenario. We could say that 100 rounded to the nearest multiple
of 9 equals 99, and that divided by 9 is 11. Or, we could just divide 100 by
9, and if the remainder is 5 or greater, we would add 1 to our quotient, but
in this case that isn't so, so we simply leave the remainder off. Therefore,
if you use the Life Drain ability in that situation, you will heal by 11 Hit
Points and Bob will be damaged 11 Hit Points. If he were to have 256 Hit Points,
we would use one of those same processes and wind up with 28 Hit Points drained
from Bob. You can know this before you execute the move! If after you use Life
Drain you see a number like 11.11111... HP, then that number is rounded to the
nearest integer, or whole number-anything after the dot, of course, is the remainder
written out in decimal form. In this case, because you always divide the Current
Hit Points by 9, the number in the tenths place is the remainder as you it would
be written if you did long division up to the remainder.
According to Scriptfox and MonoKeras, strength plays a great factor in the
Battledome. However, to raise icon amount or strength by one or two points isn't
a very radical change. Raising icons is hard to do but is possible; for example,
getting rid of your Improved Lightning Beam and buying a Grand Lightning Beam
is an icon raise I recommend. This kind of icon raising is effective because
you can have one weapon, and sell it for money you can use to buy a stronger
weapon to replace it. As for strength, a 20-point, or even a 10-point gain is
an expensive but radical improvement that's more difficult than raising icons,
and during wars or Defenders of Neopia sprees, visible changes like this are
still harder to do.
The most radical change you can make with the least amount of funds, though,
is to raise Maximum Hit Points. One raise affects just how much trash they can
take from an opponent, obviously, but it also affects some abilities (Regenerate,
Restore, Life Drain when used by your opponent), the Healing Springs, and some
healing items (Amulet of Life, Jade Scorchstone), but it doesn't affect your
pets' strength. Raising hit points also will gradually make some fixed healing
items less effective (All Scorchstones except Jade, most Healing Potions, Elixirs,
Wands/Staffs/Rods of Nova), so that you'll need to raise how effective your
healing items are. That works exactly like icon raising, although in the healing
category upgrading is costlier and more time-consuming,
In the defence department, this works the same way. However, here, there are
an assortment of weapons that can block all of a certain icon (Soul Stone, Ghoulish
Mask, Amulet of Darkness) that oftentimes come into play. Upgrading is easiest
here, and you can get some wonderful defensive artifacts for a great price,
namely the one I put in parentheses above. How defensive weapons function is
that they cancel out icons to get a certain amount of remaining icons to put
through the formula. They do not prevent you from getting a fixed amount of
Hit Points taken away from you-that's what healing items are for.
Of course, you should consider a battle pet's right to good armament-therefore,
you should time your upgrades carefully. To do this you must wait until you
have an amount of Neopoints equal to the price of the stronger weapon minus
the price of the weaker weapon. For example, Blue Scorchstones are worth 150,000
Neopoints, and Bronze ones are 20,000. Blue is stronger than Bronze, so it's
an upgrade. Thus, you will need 130,000 Neopoints, plus the Bronze Scorchstone
or its value in Neopoints, to buy a Blue Scorchstone. There will probably be
an offset, more or less, in the aforementioned values, so again, time your upgrades
carefully!
The average Battledome player knows that every round, you can choose two pieces
of equipment and an ability or attack. This is where dual-action items come
in. They serve more than one of the four purposes in the Battledome: attack,
defence, healing, and generation. Wands, Staffs, and Rods of Nova serve all
four of these purposes. Many other weapons serve two, like the Moon Staff, Caustic
Potion, and the Mask of Coltzan. The more actions you can use in a round, and
the more powerful each action is, the more effective your attack is.
Well, Battledome enthusiasts, that just about covers everything that I have
to say here in this article. To sum it up, if you can think a little bit about
these techniques and do the math in your head or on paper, you can succeed in
the Battledome Feel free to Neomail
me at beatzero3! |
