Board Thread:Shadow Fight 2 Discussion/@comment-2601:147:8500:2740:E8A0:101D:186B:CA6F-20190316232551

I think I have a good idea of what enemies know and don't know about Shadow. Here are my ideas. Please feel free to dispute anything you disagree with.

Enemies can access Shadow's metadata and know:

>how far away you are

>when you are on the ground

>when you are in the air

>when you press an attack button

>which buttons you have available

Those last two are especially important. Enemies do not seem to know WHICH button you press. Want evidence? In Act VI, there is a Challenge that forces you to fight Arrow (equipped with Silver Spear) with only Needles, which are automatically given to you at a predetermined power level. There are two important things that I have taken notice of.

Before I tell you more, I need to be sure you understand how I buy and upgrade equipment to understand why I fought Arrow the way I did. I'm currently in the Interlude in this save file, though I have played until Act VI in a previous save file over year ago. For all player levels that do not require me to fight a boss, I restrict myself to upgrading the weapon three times and upgrading the armor/helm one time each. For levels that require fighting bosses ( which includes every level in the Interlude), I upgrade the weapon four times and the armor/helm two times each. I try not to buy/upgrade magic and ranged weapons. When I encounter an Equipment level X challenge, I try to level up by fighting extra hard Tournament battles and buy the NEXT level's equipment so that I can be prepared for the NEXT level's Equipment level X challenge. The only time I used this trick (if you can't tell, I hate grinding survival) outside of those circumstances so far was for the Ranged weapon only challenge.

Are you still reading? I'm not adding a tl;dr to this post. Here are two things I noticed that impacted how I thought about the Ranged weapon only challenge. ONE: When you level up, enemies get stronger. When I fight in survival and especially when I use Magic, I notice a significant decrease in damage after I level up and use the same Magic/equipment from before. I couldn't beat Arrow with my armor/helm so underpowered (I had come close to beating one round, but I never actually beat one), so I fought in Tournaments to level up. When I leveled up and bought equipment, I returned to the fight, only to discover that I had to hit Arrow about twice as many times.

TWO: Arrow rolled to dodge my Needles EVERY time she could. Does this seem strange? Did you think that was normal? Actually, it isn't. I've grinded survival too many times. If you throw magic or a ranged weapon at the enemy right you successfully hit them and they are still standing, the enemy has a HIGH chance of not trying to avoid the attack. Why? The AI thinks you want to use melee attacks. The AI can only guess how much range you have for your melee attacks, so sometimes the enemies throw magic at you while you standing very close to them. That means the AI doesn't know which button you'll press. However, notice the way the enemies sometimes bluff you with a melee attack from just a bit too far away. This isn't simply because of player skill; it's also because the enemies can usually predict when you are vulnerable. In the Ranged weapon only challenge, the AI knows that the only thing you can do is throw ranged weapons. That makes you very easy to predict and is part of why that is one of the hardest challenges. In my opinion, that challenge is even harder than Enduring Fight. 