TFS
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I really liked this fight; while it has a high level of difficulty this is accomplished through having to keep track of essentially eight rotations, all of which are predictable and can be influenced by the player. I appreciate how this was accomplished without a single mechanic that felt uninteractive or overly restrictive to engage with, and the extra day of development time is pretty evident.
I'm a big fan of Sepulchure's rotation and the Alteon/Corvak orb being based on hit check; this is something an attentive player can keep track of, influence, and predict several turns in advance, but isn't something that an inattentive player simply plugging-and-playing a spreadsheet will be able to replicate. The fact that they all layer weak debuffs on (almost) every turn also means there's a constant element of cost/benefit, as you can justifiably shield most of the attacks at the expense of having to take a later debuff and whichever one is more appealing will vary based on class.
Hungering Dark and Doomed Pursuit (cool reference to the scripted story fight) are also cool mechanics to include with hitcheck-based rotations; you're forced to keep engaging with his debuffs instead of disabling him by turtling. The fact that he gets so much Bonus is kept from being frustrating by his low damage which I would also point out as an element of very good design.
I appreciated Sepulchure's usage of DoomKnight class mechanics (specifically Favor as a second phase) and also thought the player getting +Boost during the final damage race was super fun. The HP-dependent buff to his damage still encourages you to damage race him at the end even though you know he's going to die once it expires, which is super engaging. Fluffy's rotations and animations having parity with Drahr'Hatir's was also very fun to see.
I also think this fight did a great job of having a sense of escalating difficulty even after you kill the first enemy (something that several bosses this year have tried to incorporate!). Because Alteon and Corvak stack damage as the fight progresses, they won't be too overbearing while you focus down Fluffy but start to become very dangerous by the time Fluffy is defeated. Alteon then obviously becomes enraged once Corvak is defeated and has his skills empowered the lower his HP is, so there's still a sense of danger. And Sepulchure has a number of very annoying disruptive moves but very little damage, so you're compelled to leave him for last while still being forced to keep track of what he's doing for the entire duration of the fight. And then there's still a final phase and a dramatic climax at the end of the fight once he uses Favor. The only time the fight really eases up is when Alteon is dead and Sepulchure is still in his first phase, but by then you could be out of mana and still have tension that way. I was very impressed by the lack of downtime for such a long fight!
I think if I had to criticize this fight I think the design and expected player approach are a little similar to the prior party fights against the Chaos Slayers and Sir Malifact; while there's nothing wrong with more of a good thing, I think those ones were a little more exciting just because they hadn't been done before. The orb above Alteon/Corvak also looked kinda janky and I don't think it was contextualized what that was supposed to be in-universe, thought having a visual indicator for when the attack was coming was good for gameplay. I also don't think being forced to kill the dragons first is super necessary when their skills already compel you to do so; taking out Sepulchure first and then using the taunt to burst down Fluffy could have been a cool option but isn't possible due to the forced redirect (Corvak throwing himself in front of Alteon to shield him makes sense in a story context though). These are all extremely minor things though.
Okay, so let's talk about the reward. I think it is extremely, extremely cool that the final boss of the game has you go back and fight the main antagonist, in order to claim the doomblade - an incredibly iconic and story relevant item not just to DragonFable but to all of the AE games that came out after it as well. I also think it is extremely cool that this was the release for the 20th anniversary of the game, when the doomblade was one of the very first things conceived about the game's story all the way back during pre-beta. I don't think it's extremely cool that the doomblade is not actually a very good or powerful item, and likely will not be even if its stats are buffed.
Let's talk about how modern items in DragonFable are statted. For the past couple years, whenever an endgame item is designed, it's given one or more stats/areas it excels in and then one or more drawbacks. Trade-offs. Cost-benefit. Good RPG design. This is how endgame capes are statted and it works great there; Thousand Flames, Chaos Champion Wings, Sparkle Pack, Hidebehind, Threads of the Lost, Odessa, are all completely unique items that all try to do different things and don't compete with each other, so they're all good, viable options. This is also how the doomblade is statted; it has high damage, but in exchange it debuffs your LUK, CHA, END, WIS, and healing. Cool. It has a strength and some drawbacks. It works for capes, so it should work for weapons, right? Nope.
As far weapons are concerned, there's already a weapon that exists at the same upper bound of the power level but doesn't have any drawbacks, so weapons that exist at the same upper bound in only one area but then come with drawbacks are not actually useful in practice. Exalted Apotheosis was designed nearly a decade ago - before the modern design of different items having different uses - to be the best stat stick ever made, and it still is. It's already a perfect all-arounder weapon (it also doesn't help that it's so easy to get), and will be what players default to in 95% of use cases for a weapon. This means every other weapon in the game has to fight for crumbs and isn't necessarily useful; there are like 30-something inn weapons that try to fill the general slot but either aren't as strong as the default (Apotheosis), or are as strong in one area but come with a drawback that Apotheosis doesn't have. This is where NBoD falls; it does less than 1% more damage than Apotheosis, which is not a real niche, but in exchange it nukes all the aforementioned stats. This isn't a good niche, even before you consider the fact that it actually does less damage than Apoth after you have to reallocate your stats to account for the CHA debuff it puts on you, and also the fact that CBoS also holds the same terrible niche but is better.
As it is, the lack of drawbacks on Apotheosis means you only have three weapon slots. The first is Apotheosis itself, which is your default 90% of the time, then Uragiri and Infected Megabytes which have completely different uses than a standard weapon and will only ever be used in particularly difficult boss fights for 1-2 turns. Every other weapon in the game has to fight over being an Apotheosis alt (except for two that are IM alts, but came out before it and are just worse versions of the same thing). Which means that you use GDC in niche cases where your target resists Apotheosis's elements, and and then CBoS on burst turns for some crit classes, for a <1% damage increase vs Apoth and only if on turns where you aren't using defensive moves on either self or dragon. This very sad, niche role is what the doomblade has to compete with, and it isn't even winning since CBoS has more crit. If a weapon is doing the same thing as Apotheosis it's generally not going to be worth using outside of extremely fringe and highly competitive niches. And that's not great when Apotheosis does (almost) everything. The other 30 or so endgame weapons are completely useless for this reason, barring GoEP which is because of the -ele special and not its actual stats.
Making items that excel in one area but have drawbacks is fun game design, but doesn't make them super useful in practice when there's already an item that exists at the same upper bound of the power level but without the drawbacks. Due to the existence of Apotheosis, this design approach doesn't work for weapons like it does for capes. (The problem also isn't unique to Apotheosis; this 'good at everything, no drawbacks' stat profile exists on several items including GDC that are just marginally weaker than Apotheosis, and would also make NBoD/etc unappealing for the same reason).
If the intent was for NBoD to be an important endgame weapon, it should have either been powercreeping Apotheosis (this is both boring game design, and not what DragonFable is trying to do with modern items), competing with IM for the healing slot (probably not flavor compliant), or competing with Uragiri (which actually does break the mold by offering something Apotheosis does not, and is a completely unique item). Or better yet, start over by raising the level cap, making NBoD level 100, and then committing to not giving any level 100 items the 'this is the best at everything and it has no drawbacks' stat profile
NBoD's special is certainly useful, it's an alternative to Lucky Hammer which still had niche uses. This the best damage option in use cases where GoEP and Vile Rose aren't applicable, and if you're not in a fight that would prefer Cysero or Awethur or RR. The weapon is worth keeping in your inventory for that reason. I was a little amused when I saw someone point out that NSoD's special was this 120000000000% destructo mega nuke and then NBoD's special was a +10% increase to two of your stat modifiers. It's also very fun to have just for the art.
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The mechanics are largely underwhelming and the fights aren't complex.
I do not think you actually played this.
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Not having unique OST for the duo fight also just kind of makes this feel like a rather low effort fight
It's DragonFable's main theme.
< Message edited by TFS -- 6/9/2026 16:11:58 >
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