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Was bored so heres my version of a Dragon: Marked for Death mixed martial artist. Hope you all enjoy.

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SAD-II 102: Marked For Death

All the news related to DMFD lately got me playing again. Stoked for the Empress DLC in Blaster Master too. *_*

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Dragon Marked For Death probably my most detailed/complicated piece to date. X_X

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CARRYING FANART! Because I have been boosting people through the initial grind a lot lately!

Also, recommendation: Do not let a level 5 Oracle play with a level 80 caterpillar. It does not end well.

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And done with the DMFD-fanart~. Next up the Shinobi and Empress of two more friends whom I got addicted to the game~.

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Was about time I drew some decent fan art for my warrior in Dragon Marked For Death. It was fun before, but I’m having a BLAST since I started to play Fire Contract. Though I can’t stop imagining what the armor would look like if it showed all the damage I got since I started playing (looking at you, Vasith…). By now, that must be held together with ductape and willpower alone! LOTS of willpower. Also, Tuesday is DMFD-Evening~. Looking forward to clobbering stuff~. And a touch of black butterflies, because I wouldn’t be where I am in that game without the input of a certain witch. :D 

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.:Atruum is watching over you, little witch:.

Fanart of Dragon Marked For Death, for Zachie who helps me with the challenges the game throws at us. You got my axe~.

Markers and fineliners on A4 Bristol paper. Also, the original work got sparkly magic butterflies!

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Some tips for playing the Warrior

Timing is everything when playing the Warrior.

It is the difference between taking All Of The Damage, or none of it, and between dealing All Of The Damage, or none of it.

I normally prefer to respect the wisdom of the game's creators and not mess with the default control mapping, but in this case I think they made a mistake which is easy to fix in one of two ways.

Key-Binding Option 1

What I like to do is change Berserk from the default A-button to the unused X-button.

This makes it possible for me to ever-so-slightly shift the thumb I'm using to hold down the Y-button. Without releasing the Y-button, I can use the edge of my thumb to hit the X-button. In this way, I can hold onto a charged attack even as I activate Berserk.

Key-Binding Option 2

Alternatively, you could move the attack command to the Right Trigger in place of Dragon Guard, and move Dragon Guard to the X-button or A-button as you please. That way, you don't have use your thumb to manipulate two different buttons at the same time, and you can activate Berserk or Dragon Guard without releasing your charged attack.

Moving the Dragon Guard from a finger-button to a thumb-button doesn't matter much, since you cannot use Dragon Guard to cancel the animation of any action. If you started any action with a thumb-button, your thumb has plenty of time to move to another thumb-button before the animation ends and Dragon Guard becomes available again.

Regardless, Benefits

Avoiding Berserk until just before making a charged attack (and canceling it immediately after inflicting damage) reduces the time you spend suffering Berserk's drain on Dragon Points... and of course also reduces the enemy's window of opportunity for inflicting the most damage on you.

Charging Up The Buster

Pressing the attack button will never cancel any of the Warrior's actions... but will always begin charging the Warrior's next attack. Whether you're still in the animation for a normal attack, a charged attack, a Dragon Smash attack, a Tackling attack, a Shield Tackling attack, or the activation animation for Berserk, or using Dragon Guard, you should be pressing and holding the attack button.

You can activate and deactivate Berserk without losing a charged attack or interrupting a charge.

You can also activate Dragon Guard or make a Tackling attack without losing a charged attack or interrupting a charge.

Using a Tackle while charging can buy you time to complete a full charge for the biggest possible attack. Or at least to unleash a stronger partially-charged attack.

Slow But Steady

Achieving a a full charge reduces your walking speed. But this either has no effect on running, or an unnoticeably small effect, so you can work around it.

When unleashing a fully-charged attack, as soon as your ax hits the ground you become free to act again; you CAN cancel the short animation of him pulling his ax up by using Dragon Guard or simply by moving, so make sure to use either to avoid getting hit by a survivor.

You cannot cancel this short recovery animation with an attack, but you CAN begin charging your next one.

Better Than Nothing... Or Better Than Everything

An incomplete charge is still stronger than a basic swing. So at first, you should always be charging your next attack. (Unless you just need to get somewhere and pressing the Dash button repeatedly is too annoying.)

But actually, a partially-charged attack can be much better for you than a fully-charged one, since the basic attack animation lashes out faster and lasts a shorter amount of time (allowing for quicker recovery and reaction).

Sometimes, trying to hit an enemy with a fully-charged attack just ensures you will get hit by the enemy (if it didn't die or get knocked back) or by another enemy who attacks while you're unable to move.

"Consecutive Normal Blows"

Since you can't do anything else while in the middle of your slow-as-hell basic attack animation, it's a good time to begin charging your next attack.

If you release that slightly charged attack immediately after the animation for your previous attack is over, and keep doing that, you can achieve a balance between the Warrior's most rapid succession of attacks and his greater damage outputs. This could be ideal for dealing with lots of fast-moving enemies that don't stagger enough when hit with your biggest attack.

But if you are going to use your fully-charged attack, try to hit as many enemies as possible with the forward and backward shockwaves.

Dragon Smash

The tips I offered above for key-binding and only activating Berserk just before releasing a fully charged attack will greatly help you pull off this tricky attack.

The game does not explain that the Dragon Smash attack requires you to have at least two full units of your Dragon Points gauge (which can store 10 units in total), since that's how much it costs to use.

Since I didn't know this, I spent way too long trying to practice the attack in the hub town and wondering why I couldn't get it to work. You can only really practice this on a mission, where there are enemies to hurt for Dragon Points.

For the basic Water/Ice Warrior, there's a very low chance that Dragon Smash will inflict Frostbite on an enemy it does not manage to kill.

Keep in mind that, since you must be Berserk to use Dragon Smash, you actually need a bit more than two full units of Dragon Points, since being Berserk drains your Dragon Points.

Shield Tackle

The game not only fails to explain how to perform the "Shield Tackle" attack, it doesn't even give it a name like it does for the Dragon Smash. I would forgive you for barely noticing it when it happens, and certainly for not understanding what it is.

This version of the Tackle attack only happens when you are Berserk, and only when you have at least one full unit of Dragon Points. This is because it costs one full unit of Dragon Points.

Keep in mind that, since you must be Berserk to use Shield Tackle, you actually need a bit more than one full unit of Dragon Points, since being Berserk drains your Dragon Points.

The attack is much slower than the Tackle, in that the Warrior lifts his shield-arm up in front of him before dashing forward. In exchange, the Tackle inflicts at least twice as much damage and knocks enemies flying backwards.

This attack is definitely one more reason why you should master the trick of only ever activating Berserk immediately before making an attack. If you activate Berserk too soon and simply leave it active, you could find yourself committing to a much slower, much more expensive Shield Tackle than the regular Tackle you wanted.

Dragon Guard

As stated, you cannot use Dragon Guard to cancel the animation of any other action. Unless you include walking back or forth.

You cannot use Dragon Guard while in the air.

Using Dragon Guard will instantly end a Berserk state.

You cannot cancel Dragon Guard by pressing any other button. Dragon Guard only ends when you release the button or run out of Dragon Points. Since it ends immediately in either case, it's not like canceling out of it would help you.

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This this reminds me of later versions of the Mega Man (zero onwards)series is the artist the same? Similar

Same artist, same studio.

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Don’t buy the “Season Pass”

Absolutely none of the missions impact the main story, and if you’re really curious about the Bandit, you can watch the cutscenes on Youtube.

The bosses are either lazy reskins of the Asura Goblin you already fought, or horribly designed exercises in unfair punishment and frustration.

The Werewolf is the least offender, with its “devour you slowly” attack which will kill you despite being massively overleveled for the mission’s difficulty. But the Bandit is a special level of bullshit; not only is there absolutely no warning what attack it will use, or when, it seems to react to your actions even while it is attacking. It breaks every precedent for boss battles in this game, which I enjoyed for being basically puzzles rather than reflex exercises.

Also, one of the missions, “Resurging Flames”, is actually RANDOMIZED in such a way that it can be literally impossible to complete as a single player, and I don’t have faith that you can reliably complete the mission without all four character classes.

You don’t need these extra missions to enjoy the game or its bare-bones story. Patches alone will open up the whole array of the game’s features.

Until or unless Inti Creates patches the Bandit to bring it into line with the rest of the game’s design philosophy, DON’T BOTHER.

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No good reason why Empress’s whip and Warrior’s tackle aren’t a single button

Neither one use all of the right-thumb letter buttons for their existing moves. Both have one button left that could have been mapped to this function, or even just allowed you the option.

I consistently fail to execute the tackle and simple walk straight into enemies, and even after getting the Empress to level 45 I cannot rely on my ability to execute her whip-swing – especially not for the particularly difficult challenges that involve changing direction in mid-air and throwing the whip out at the precisely correct time because there’s no platform to land on for a break.

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Stop abusing the Invisible Jellyfish!

Quite possibly the worst mook in the game, because they’re completely invisible until they first move.

That by itself wouldn’t be bad. It would be a fair warning that these are enemies that turn invisible when they stay still, so you need to watch out for them when you’re also dealing with visible enemies attacking you at the same time.

But it is unacceptable when the level designers place them directly in the player’s path, such that it becomes impossible to avoid running straight into them.

What is the lesson supposed to be? “Don’t ever run for fear of getting a facefull of Jellyfish and a status ailment?” That would be a terrible lesson. It would also be a lie, since some of them can only be avoided by running past their starting locations; walking is what gives them time to hit you.

Special mention goes to the Jellyfish in the Resurging Flames mission, since it is waiting for you over a lava pit that the Empress can only cross by swinging. She can’t swing across the lava pit without hitting the Jellyfish and falling into the lava.

This goes beyond punishing players for not memorizing the exact spawning locations of every minor enemy in every mission of the game. It’s simply being a troll.

Special mention also goes to the Resurging Flames mission for being literally impassible the first time I tried it. There was a steel barrier blocking what, on a second attempt without the steel barrier, proved to be the only path to progress, whereas all other paths led to loot impossible for a single player (or at least the Empress) to collect. Of all paths to glitch up, that was obviously the worst. I had no choice but to abandon the quest, and that obviously meant giving up all the items, gold, and experience I collected, on top of wasting my time backtracking the entire map twice.

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Hidden Hell is a bad quest

It’s exactly the same difficulty level as Werewolf Hunting, but ridiculously easier. For once, I could have explored the entire level to acquire all possible loot, instead of rushing to the boss expecting to die. But I didn’t die.

The Bandit is still a bullshit boss, because he still has absolutely no tells warning you what he’s about to do. After he does anything, he’ll just stand around letting you hit him until he’s suddenly half-way across the screen with a red damage number above your head, and sometimes he’ll stop and let you hit him again, and other times he executes another two or three completely un-telegraphed attacks.

But the insult to injury is that the quest doesn’t even mean anything. The story is that a young wizard trapped the bandit in a magical barrier and wants you to go in and defeat him while he can’t get away, but after you defeat him the Bandit goes “The barrier’s down; I’d better get away” and then he does, and the Wizard’s all “whoops, my bad”. So, the entire mission is a narratively a waste of time. It advances no plot at all. We don’t even learn anything new about the Bandit, and the young wizard, Poisk, will probably never appear again, let alone be important to a story. Completing the quest doesn’t even unlock a new one.

The mission also takes place in the new Labyrinth of Flame, which to remind you, is the new DLC stage that is especially annoying about taunting solo-players with two different kinds of new puzzles that require at least two players to solve.

How on Earth did the developers think this and Werewolf Hunting were remotely on the same level? And just how badly overworked are they that they think the Bandit and the Werewolf are acceptable boss designs compared to everything else in the game? Where the FUCK are the tells to alert you when these assholes are going to attack, let alone HOW they’re going to attack?

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The DLC mission bosses are bullshit

All of the original bosses have “tells” that let you know what attack they’re going to do before you do it. Every attack is telegraphed.

The Dragonblood Bandit and the Werewolf do not. They will lunge across the entire screen to tear you apart, and you have no idea when they will do it, and no time to react once they do. The Bandit is manageable in his first appearance and insane in the Asura’s Gate appearance. A mission where he also runs away, and then runs across the entire level with no indication if you’re supposed to catch him before he escapes and you fail the mission, or whether you can just follow him at your leisure until you chase him into another gate.

I’m 17 levels over the recommendation for the Werewolf quest, and he has one attack where he grabs me and slowly kills me completely from full health without any way to break his grasp. This attack also inflicts poison, so even if I survived, I would die.

Also, Vasith is a mandatory mid-boss for the werewolf mission, as if to further stomp on your face while also reminding you what a good boss battle looks like before it beats you over the head with a bad one.

The Infernal Labyrinth quest actually has a higher level recommendation than the werewolf quest, but I’ve actually managed to deplete more than half the Asura Goblin's health. The greatest difficulty fighting this asshole is that his most frequent attack happens a bit too fast and frequently to get some good hits in, and it inflicts frost, so if you fail to dodge the first hit you’re likely not dodging the rest, unless you give up attacking entirely. Also, it’s boss room is a platformer, with damaging lava pits that act like quicksand, so frostbite makes it impossible to jump between platforms and just sends you into the lava.

If I took a Frostbite blocker, the Goblin might become a lot easier, but there’s nothing you can do about the Werewolf and his “zero to Eating Your Face” attacks.

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I’m an idiot.

I’m still new to the Nintendo Switch, and completely forgot about the player profiles. My nephew had very diligently switched from my profile to his profile before starting a new game (and therefore certainly didn’t negligently save over an existing file), and I did not think to switch back to my own profile before checking the save data, so I saw his profile’s save data instead of my own.

This is after I had been set straight by his mother that he had not lied, but that I misunderstood his testimony. Also after I had apologized for my behavior, and after the whole family pitched in to get her and her kids their own Nintendo Switch and games to avoid similar problems in the future.

So on top of everything else, I’ve now also apologized to him and his mother for not even doing my own proper due diligence before jumping to conclusions. Things aren’t going to be the same, but we’ve mended the bridge I burned, and peace has largely returned to our household.

On the positive side, I still have all of my progress, and now I can buy my nephew his own copy of the game so I finally have someone to play local co-op with.

My punishment has been feeling like a monster, eating humble pie, and witlessly investing several hours of play into my nephew’s old player profile on my Switch (because I had forgotten separate profiles were a thing), collecting XP and items that neither of us are going to be able to enjoy.

I don’t count buying them games as part of the punishment, because their birthdays are this month and I wanted to give them something of their own now that we recognized that me loaning my Switch out could go badly. If her kids had broken my Switch, my data definitely would have been lost, and I wouldn’t have been able to play at all before getting my warranted replacement.

On another positive note, it was nice to easily thrash the first few bosses of the game with the beginner account. I have improved at playing the game, not simply at increasing my stats.

He erased my save file

I came home, and saw my nephew playing my game on my Switch. I watched and specifically waited for him get to the point of the beginning of the game where it made the first save for a new record.

It didn’t occur to me to stop him. Surely, he wouldn’t have clicked Start A New File and then specifically have chosen the save file that clearly announced it had data on it in Slot 1, rather than choosing Slot 2 which clearly announced it held No Data.

That’s what I told myself. I just needed to check to make sure my file was still there, and I’d leave him to keep playing on Save File 2. Probably stick around to explain some of the things the game didn’t.

But no. He saved over my file.

I sort of lost my shit. I shouted, “YOU ERASED MY SAVE FILE!” and then I went quiet, because he’s just a kid, and I didn’t trust myself not to shout any more. I just stood there, speechless in my anger and incredulity.

I know this kid plays video games. How could he have misread the save files? Why didn’t he think to at least ask, if he didn’t understand?

Oh, and then he lies and tries to blame it on his sister. Which I actually bought for a while, because he’s never lied to me before, but later I realized the only new character on the file is named after him.

I was prepared to be really happy to share the game with him, and share what I had learned about the game, but instead I find that he stole weeks of playtime away from me by being absolutely careless with my property.

I am so pissed.

But you know what’s worse? This happens in the very week that I downloaded the patch that even made a second save file available. If he had tried playing the game any earlier, this mistake would have been unavoidable, but instead he chooses to do this thing on the very first weekend when it could have been completely avoided.

Fuck, I just tested the damned thing, and choosing to start a new game actually selects the blank data file by default! How the FUCK did he fuck that up?