That totally does, thanks for the perspective. See, I’m Gen 9 right now, and had been looking forward to hitting 10 and making some scoring runs with a Warlock and the DOOL ability. Despite actively using HP-equipment suicide to cut off my adventures at ~7900 XP to get a final, full adventure in before level 11, I hadn’t yet put together using that technique to suicide your way through *all* your quests so that each encounter was under DOOL conditions. I figured I would run through each adventure basically as normal and use DOOL at some optimal point during it.

Suiciding to have 100% DOOL is clever, and I’m enough of a Johnny to actually appreciate that exploit since it still requires level 11 for a top score, but you are right, I can’t see myself trying it more than once or twice before wanting to puke. Unfortunately, I simply can’t get behind being Spikey about ESR-based runs as long as cheap-ass Iron Man exploits dominate that leader board.

So, I thank you for the explanation, but all you may have done is convince me to give up on the game entirely as a Spike, since the ways the game measures success are so obviously flawed and exploitable. It’s too bad they didn’t catch those things before launch, but as a video-game developer, I know how that goes. All it would need is a reasonable gold penalty for failing to make it to the final encounter of each adventure and the DOOL suicide exploit would be closed, but you can hardly impose such a thing at this point without resetting everyone’s hard-earned scores. You could totally boot failed Iron Man scores from the leaderboards though, since those scores are hardly “hard earned.”

I am going to RSS your D&D feed, so please alert me if/when they *do* boot Iron Man exploiters from the leaderboards, at which point I will join you in your quest for ESR dominance. In the meantime, I officially recognize you at the #1 ESR player in D&D:TA, nice work!

You start adventures and enable Dark One’s Own Luck. This gets you to the highest proportion of score v. XP. You do three encounters with Dark One’s Own luck and then suicide with Belt of Sacrifice so that your character is KO’d before the fourth encounter. Before you can heal up, you use HP-generating Rings / Belts / etc. to get to the minimum amount of HP required to play an adventure. You choose the highest adventure and again use Dark One’s Own Luck and suicide with Belt of Sacrifice before Encounter 4.

You do this for 11 Levels.

Tell me do you find this to be a rewarding way to play Tiny Adventures?

I’ve tried it but I don’t have the time to put into the heavy three Encounter micromanagement required. Definitely the top players who spend a lot of time on this strategy have put something into their games… But these scores are ONLY achievable by Warlock, and ONLY by a three Encounter suicide loop (otherwise you gain too many XP relative to score… Dark One’s Own Luck gives you maximum score for a limited amount of time).

Now that you know this, does that alter your opinion of what skilled play is?

Right now I am just trying to get great Encounter Percentage with Wizard or Swordmage (though I am going to try Ranger next… Jaws of the Wolf has a very Quick Fingers way about it) using Axe of the Dwarfish Lords. In my opinion intentionally suiciding out of adventures is not a rewarding way to play. Going for top Encounter Percentage by carefully selecting potions and picking terrain rewards the strategist in me.

By the way I don’t recognize being “Number 2″ in the Globals. Look at who is “ahead” of me. Ironman Suicides showing up in the Leaderboards is a bug in the reporting. That person (who has half a dozen suicides in the top 10) is a cancer as far as I and any right thinking player is concerned.

But the top retired global Final Scores are all Warlocks. It seems like the Mithril Shirt is the best item in the abstract, but the only class in the top ten scores can’t wear it. How are you defining “really good player?”

Ah, wait, I see: Encounter Success Rate I guess since you have the #2 on that, and the top level-11 ESR.

Shooting for ESR feels intuitively like what you should be aiming to do, but that’s not how the game is scored, so I’m drawn as a Spike to Final Score. That’s what the leaderboard defaults to, it’s measured in loot which makes sense as your adventuring goal, it’s called your “score,” and there are no loopholes to crack the top ten without actually retiring as a level-eleven character who had a great run.

I could totally get into success percentage as an equally Spikey variant if the ESR leaderboard weren’t saturated by people loopholing their way into the top ten. If they didn’t allow non-level-11 scores into the leaderboards, I’d try to chase down your top level-11 ESR, but in the meantime I am going to keep chasing Janne’s 30K…

Keep in mind that just because something is 150 doesn’t make it the best. If you go Swordmage or Wizard Illithid Robes is better. I still passed Mithral Shirt the first time I ran a Swordmage but I did better the second time when I passed Illithid Robes.