Monday, February 22, 2010

NVMRC forcefield and Deathbot- necessary?

Players of lower ranks will notice that after buying the swiss army mouse trap in the journeyman part of their game progression that there are two more traps available in the Town of Gnawnia that are available that are even more powerful than the SAMT. These two traps are the mouse deathbot and the NVMRC forcefield trap. Both have more than 2000 power and both cost about 250,000 gold. Neither requires more than 100k points, so they are available at a relatively early point in playing through the game. However, at this 91k points point of the game, ~250k gold is a ton of money. So, before you splurge and spend every red cent you have to your name, you should ask yourself if this purchase is worth it. At 91k points, you will probably be in the journeyman or apprentice part of your progression through the game. Most of the mice are not very threatening, as they are generally of the white-grey-steel-granite (and so on) breeds. However, there will still be a difference. I am assuming that 250k gold is unreachable until journeyman rank, so I will use the Calm Clearing and explosive base and lucky shield all with swiss for my trap analysis. Using catch rate analysis, NVMRC is about 7% higher catch rate and Deathbot is about 5% higher catch rate than SAMT. There is no denying that these traps are an upgrade for the Calm Clearing, and the Mountain shows similar results. However, 250k is an expensive price to pay, when you consider the following:

1- For a large part of Master, you are in the Mousoleum, using the Sinister Portal.
2- For a large part of Grandmaster, you are in Furoma or at the Great Gnarled Tree, using tactical traps like the Mutated Venus Mouse Trap.
3- For Legendary, you are in Furoma with a tactical trap, in the Catacombs with the Obelisk of Slumber or ACRoNYM, or you are in the Lagoon trying to catch the Hydra.
4- Ronza comes around often enough that between 91k points and the point when you next need a strong physical trap (Legendary- Hydra catching), you should encounter her even if you started the day after she left.

The Hydra almost demands the Digby Drillbot or better to be caught in a reasonable amount of time. NVMRC will just not cut it. So, save your money and don't upgrade from SAMT to NVMRC (which is better than Deathbot), because you will want to have the money available to buy these tactical/shadow/whatever traps down the line and you don't need another physical trap to do anything beyond catching easy mice in the labs.

In closing, don't buy the NVMRC unless you are in some sort of strange circumstance, like you just were given 1mil gold or something. It just isn't worth it, considering how sparsely you will actually end up using it.

1 comment:

  1. That was the worst MH advice ever!

    Get NVMRC ASAP. It is a fantastic trap relative to the other options available for the first third of the game. Don't waste money on the DrillBot until you have 16M points and are gonna get rhinobot. And Ronza hasn't been around for MONTHS.

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