Mind Worms

Seem Kind of OP

No more than dark mages.

They seem to appear much sooner though. and the fact that they target your head repeatedly makes them more dangerous (IMO).

I agree. Since they appear quite early and your endurance might not be too trained (or not at all) they become very dangerous because one hit can knock you unconscious and then kill you. Also, they attack from a distance, which in early game is more dangerous than ever, since you're less likely to have esp and even if you do your int is probably too low to be of any help unless the worm is close. On top of that, their sprite is so hard to spot you can probably mistake them for blood in the floor, specially if it's standing in a corridor where some monster escaped bleeding.

I'm not a fan of their addition, honestly (as if from the previous parragraph it wasn't obvious). Also, it doesn't make much sense to me that a worm could have psychic powers.

A regular worm, sure. But these are mind worms. Clearly they have mental abilities unknown to mere humans.

Yeah, with their brains the size of a nail.

Im not a huge fan of their addition either (at least not in their current incarnation). I feel they need to be nerfed a bit. or have their generation be made more rare.

I feel I must point out that any opinions I make about the current state of the game are uninformed. I haven't played this version, and I didn't play the last version much either. That said, I don't think that magic, or psychic powers, really correlates well with size. If it did, polar bears would be far more intimidating.

The concept of a mind worm seems fine but yeah ranged attacks targeting your head sounds possibly overpowered

How early are they appearing?

Well, it's not that size correlates with psychic powers or intelligence, but a worm seems as the most basic creature. I'd prefer a will-o-wisp for that matter.

I've run into this worms in the early levels of the gloomy cave.

How long do you take to finish UT? If you're playing too slowly and have too much HP, you will happen upon much more difficult monsters in early GC.

BTW, mind worms were already in 0.50, just not generated. Original devs "borrowed" them from from some sci-fi, I think.

I don't take that long. I'm finding them more often on the final levels before Elpuri now and they're much more easier to kill when well equipped and with decent esp range. Still, they demand immediate attention. Quick question, when they're hatchlings, does it mean they've hatched from someone's head or can they spawn randonly as hatchlings too? Also, are hatchlings weaker/do less damage than regular ones?

BTW, I would be careful with nerfing mind worms too much:

* They are extremely fragile and slow, so you will kill them immediately when you find them.

* They are cowardly and will try to run away from you, so if you're attacked and don't want to deal with them, just head back and they will not pursue.

* Tin helmets.

If anything, we could do something with the HP threshold for their generation.


I think they can both be hatched from someone's head, or (very rarely) generated. They are weaker and cannot infect you with mind worm eggs.

Yes, I think the hp needed for them to spawn should be revised, because they're only really dangerous at low endurance since the head has only a few hit points and they attack exclusively there.

There is something that needs to be addressed with these mind worms. They need to make a special sound when attacking your brain and another one when entering your skull (possibly with an attack animation too), because when you're at the end game and have high int and esp your message bar gets spammed with actions done by all the creatures in the level you sense, so spotting either of these messages among all the things going on is pretty damn hard. And you may not even notice the damage in your head until it's too late. I believe it's currently the only damage type that doesn't make a sound or animation of some sort. Since these little bastards are so deadly (they can knock you unconscious and that's basically game over if there's enemies nearby), the player needs to be warned somehow.

I just got infected without noticing it before killing one of these. My head was moderately damaged so I retreated to a previous level to heal and bam, a mind worm got out of my head. While doing so, in the same turn, it knocked me unconscious and the rest is history. Needless to say I was pretty pissed because I died not for making a poor decision but for missing a single line of text, whereas obviously my character would've noticed a freaking worm entering and leaving his skull.

This is specially true now that there are sounds and animations for combat, both changes I love. Now you rely a lot more on visuals rather than text to understand what's going on, which is a good thing as it helps to navigate through the game more fluently. But it's also more likely you won't notice a message in your dialog box.

I agree 100%. for a random spawn, they have the difficulty of a boss monster. probably more difficult because of the head only/unconsious attack. Its really annoying and unbalancing, and really, not enjoyable.