Combinatorial Explosion: Difference between revisions

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* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' once had a minor instance of this that has since been nerfed. Two engineering-made items, when used together, allow a character to leap huge distances. For a good stretch of time many players used this to effortlessly win [[Capture the Flag]] matches, but the developers eventually caught on and attempting this now will cause the player to drop the flag.

** There also was a combination of items and abilities that allowed feral druids and rogues to have the dodge percentage of more than [[Beyond the Impossible|100%]]. This turned the wearer completely invulnerable to physical attacks, allowing them to defeat certain bosses (like Gruul and Illidan) with ease.

* In the ''[[~~Callahans~~ Crosstime Saloon (Literature)|Callahans Crosstime Saloon]]'' videogame, most objects in the environment had unique descriptions for all of the hotspots. Also, interacting with them with any possible inventory item would produce a unique spot. The game's designer, Josh Mandel, has said that [[I Can't Use These Things Together|stock responses]] in these games always bugged him, and tried to write his games to avoid this as much as possible. Also see ''Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist'', and certain parts of ''[[Space Quest]] 6''.

* In the ''[[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (Literature)|Callahans Crosstime Saloon]]'' videogame, most objects in the environment had unique descriptions for all of the hotspots. Also, interacting with them with any possible inventory item would produce a unique spot. The game's designer, Josh Mandel, has said that [[I Can't Use These Things Together|stock responses]] in these games always bugged him, and tried to write his games to avoid this as much as possible. Also see ''Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist'', and certain parts of ''[[Space Quest]] 6''.

* In ''[[My Sims]]'', you, by default, have an ax. However, you can only use it to chop down live trees. You can''not'' use it to chop down the boards blocking your way to the old power station, or chop up the fallen tree barring your way to the forest to the west. For ''those'', you need to earn the "appropriate" tools. (You also can't use it on Sims you don't like, but if you could, it wouldn't be rated E, now would it?)

* Even ''Shannara'', which usually handles this pretty well, wasn't completely safe from this. If you've tried to tie a rope to ANYTHING apart from your dagger or something useful, it gave the same scripted response. Hilarity ensues when you get "you tie the rope around a river and give it a few tugs".

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blow cobwebs<br />

I'm sorry if you're feeling frustrated. If you like, you can type SAVE to store your progress to a file (in most interpreters), then RESTORE to come back to it later. In the meantime, you might try '''searching the web''' to see if there are hints available. }}

* ''[[Latale]]'' has an interesting example. There exists a weapon (that curiously lacks a class restriction) that gives anywhere from 500% to 950% extra critical damage when it activates for five seconds. There exists an item that gives 1000% critical rate for three seconds. Combine them with your most powerful attack, and you can wipe out almost half of a high-end boss's health in one attack. The only thing that stops it from [[Game Breaker|tearing through every boss in the game]] is the [[Randomly Drops|weapon's rarity]] and it's [[Luck Based Mission|low rate of activation,]] but when it works, stuff dies.

* ''[[Latale]]'' has an interesting example. There exists a weapon (that curiously lacks a class restriction) that gives anywhere from 500% to 950% extra critical damage when it activates for five seconds. There exists an item that gives 1000% critical rate for three seconds. Combine them with your most powerful attack, and you can wipe out almost half of a high-end boss's health in one attack. The only thing that stops it from [[Game Breaker|tearing through every boss in the game]] is the [[Randomly Drops|weapon's rarity]] and it's [[Luck-Based Mission|low rate of activation,]] but when it works, stuff dies.

* Touched on in the first ''Doom'' novel. The characters want to use a rocket launcher on the red-key door. They decide to get the red key anyway in case they need to save the rocket ammo for something horrible.

* ''[[Back to The Future]]: The Game'' gets a bad example of this in its third episode. Marty is carrying two newspapers. When he tries to use one of them for anything other than a puzzle designed for its use, he remarks that "If I'm doing anything with this, I'm recycling it." That would be an okay remark if the episode didn't contain a trio of big, obvious recycling bins that can be interacted with (that cause Marty to give the exact same response if you try to use the newspaper on them. Whoops!)

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[[Category:Video Game Items and Inventory]]

[[Category:Combinatorial Explosion]]

[[Category:Combinatorial Explosion]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]

[[Category:Trope]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]