Duke Nukem: Naferia's Reign: Invasion of the Dark Mistress: Difference between revisions

{{quote| ''"No hero or villain, no matter how cool, powerful, talented, skilled or charasmatic can do everything all by themself. Even they eventually hit their limits, whether it be the limit of their patience or the limit of their skill, power and talent..."'}}

Much like the creator's fanfiction work, ''[[The Misfits (fanfic)|The Misfits]]'', Naferia's Reign is also a [[Crossover]] of many mediums, including (of course) [[Duke Nukem]], but also [[Shadow Warrior]], a lesser known game also made by the same creators as Duke Nukem 3D, whose main character is also a playable character in this mod. Additionally combined is the [[Bubsy]] series, with the title character also being a main character as well. Another series included is the [[Sailor Moon]] series, with two of the Inner Sailor Senshi (Ami and Minako respectively) being playable characters as well. Another included series is the [[Earthbound]] series (with Paula from the second game being the player character that appears in the mod, and with the ATM account of Ness appearing as an easter egg). The final element includes some examples of [[Real Life]], as the character of Jack is actually based off a 13-year old counterpart of the creator [however like Clint, his [[The Misfits (fanfic)|Misfits counterpart]], Jack has no Gary Stu qualities and is more of a [[Sidekick]] at times to certain characters, despite also being a playable character himself].

Two or three more of the characters are actually [[Mook Promotion|Expies]] of some of the types of aliens seen in the original Duke Nukem 3D, such as ESSence [a Battlelord (the first boss) Expy] and Cybanis [a Cycloid-Emperor (the third boss) Expy], while Nethra is an Expy of the Protector Drones from the expansion pack of Duke Nukem 3D (when she's in that form, and not her [[Split Personality|human alter-ego]] Christina Mitchell). And finally toping out the characters are Ted, Lisa, Lori, the "Mysterious Lady", and Maken, all of whom are not taken from a game or series of their own.

** The "Mirror Shield" equippable item is a more balanced item. Having one equipped on a character cuts damage to them by 50% and instantly deflects the blocked damage back to the attacking enemy with no chance of this evading or defending from it. A second mirror shield will cut damage to the charater by a total of 75% and deflects that much back. A third mirror shield jacks it up to 87.5% protection, etc. This can be done up to 4 times, for a 93.75% damage protection/deflection rate.

* [[Auto Revive]]: It's extremely hard to come upon for most players who have plenty of resurrective items, but if the "Mysterious Woman" is killed and stays dead for 10 in-game minutes without a [[Total Party Kill]] occuring, she will ''automatically resurrect herself''... somehow. This still doesn't really explain much about who she's supposed to be though.

* [[Brainy Brunette]]: According to the various bits of known info in character biographies and item descriptions, Lisa is essentially one of these in additional to being a part-time teen fashion model. Examples include that of her self-made "[[Deflector Shields|Biocellular Energy Shield]]" (see below) is a powerful body-tight energy shield that provides a second layer of protection for her from damage (on top of [[Bulletproof Vest|Armor points]]). The [[Word of God]] document on the author's hard drive appearantly will have more information on this and many other things storyline and character related down the road. Additionally, in a more recent version of the game soon to be released, she can use Money and some of her [[Mana|Energy Points]] to repair broken vending machines and broken ATM machines (which are usable features in the mod).

* [[Bulletproof Vest]]: Armor in Naferia's Reign is improved from the original [[Duke Nukem|Duke Nukem 3D]] in that like [[Hit Points|HP]], it is now an exact numeric value, called "Armor Points" (or "AP"). An additional factor in this is "Armor Absorbsion %", or "AB%", which determines how much of the damage from an attack is taken by the armor worn instead of the character's HP. There are multiple types of armor items that can set different level of AB% or even one type of Armor known simply as "Super Armor" which gives you up to 200% AP [like a Blue Combat-Armor item in the [[Doom]] series]. AB% ''can'' also go up to a full 100% (and is always set to this when someone is under the effects of the "Shield Emblem" regenerative [[Power-Up]]). Do keep in mind due to "[[Fake Difficulty]]" below, monsters can equally use Armor the way a player character does, and it gives them much more survivablity, especially on the harder [[Difficulty Levels]].

** A secondary change to armor in the modification is the appearance of the "Armor"-type items, in that they have four different sprites to represent them, depending on if you're using any human-sized male, a female character in general [all are human-sized], one specfically for ESSence's size, and one specfically for Cybanis's size. This does not actually affect which types of characters or monsters can grab the armor items, it just adds a scope of variety to the item's appearance.

** [[Shadow Warrior|Lo Wang]] is also very similar to Duke, being able to lift and press 550 to 850 pounds. It's believed his more unordodox training as a master-class Shadow Warrior has some responsibility for this though, since Lo Wang shows at least better understanding and usage of the supernatural aspects of the world than Duke.

** Lisa is another [[Badass Normal]] type characrer like Duke with no real known mystical or supernatural abilities, and has a pretty high lifting strength of her own, in the range of 305 to 355 pounds of lift and press, which puts her at almost the same strength as her friend Ted, while at a smaller and more slender build than him. On top of it, it's suggested she's a at least a 20-dan black belt in Karate on top of it.

** Maken also has a pretty impressive lift and press strength of her own, at 450 and 525 pounds. Like Lori, she also possesses [[Functional Magic|Triad Magic]], and there is a slight possibility the strength boost might originate from it, due to the existance of a skill that can increase Attack and Defense temporarily.

*** These values are listed in specfics since they actually play a part in the game (a random number in the listed ranges are chosen for each character on start up of a new game), since there are various "liftable" and "movable" objects which are affected by the physical strength level of the character in use. Characters will either push, pull, grab, or even lift various objects over their head, the later two uses allowing the character to toss said objects across rooms or even at enemies to deal some damage. Various items like the "Hyper Wrist" equippable item, the "Vitamin X", among others, can be used to temporarily increase a character's lifting/pressing strength.

** When in the main in-game menus (the ones with characters, items, support submenus, etc), holding down {{spoiler|the "FIRE" key and then shifting up or down a submenu}} will enter a cheating submenu with tons of options, including the means to controllably change your current group of characters, infinite one-time powerup cheats (Quad Damage, [[Invincibility Power-Up|Icon of the Defender]], etc), a "give 25 of most items" cheat, a "max equipment slots" cheat which overrides the difficulty level-determined number of equipment slots for each character to the max of 4, an "infinite EP/no EP use" cheat, an "instant ATM" cheat, an "instant Shop" cheat, a "Damage x 1000" cheat, a "Damage / 1000" cheat, a "Kill all Enemies" cheat, three buttons for spawning an empty and drivable Riot Tank of all three varities, an "Infinite Ammo" cheat, and various others.

* [[Death Is Cheap]]: A character who HP is reduced to 0 is considered to be actually "Dead", not just unconscious [at least according to various information in game]. However the "Resurrection Chalice" is specfically intended to revive any dead characters, making this trope apply pretty well.

* [[Demonic Spiders]] / [[Goddamned Bats]]: Basically, '''any''' enemy can potentially fall under this with the right [or wrong] conditions, usually dependant on how high the [[Difficulty Levels]] are set, or if they pick up specfic items before you can kill them off.

** In very recent versions of the modification, ''enemies'' have this same stat, allowing them to occasionally survive fatal hits as well, also left with 1 HP remaining, even hits from the [[Invincibility Power-Up|Icon of the Defender]]'s instant-killing aura. They also have a 1.5 second period of [[Mercy Invincibility]] when this happens, and their sprites will flicker like in classic platformer games during said 1.5 seconds. Unlike playable characters, they cannot use items that artifically extend their rate of surviving fatal hits, although higher level monsters have higher survivability rates.

* [[Double Jump]]: In this game, they're called "Airjumps", and it's possible to air jump more than once per character. All fifteen of the playable characters will gain the ability to multi jump as they gain levels. The Mysterious Woman starts off with one airjump to her name immediately. Additionally, there is a bonus item that gives whoever grabs it a permenant airjump extension of 1.

* [[Do Not Run with a Gun]]: Inverted by the Super Drone and in a specfic case, Riot Tanks/Scorpion Tanks on [[Difficulty Levels]] 5 through 9. The Super Drone will rip at anything in front of it with constant laser fire, and the occasional rockets, meanwhile the Riot Tanks on the higher half of the difficulty spectrum become very hellish to deal with since they can also turn around actively while shooting at you, when players can take some opportunity on the weaker [[Difficulty Levels]] to get behind them to activate their self-destruct buttons.

* [[Game Over]]: In the original [[Duke Nukem|Duke Nukem 3D]], there was no such concept as a ''true'' game over. Getting killed meant either reloading a saved game or starting fresh at the beginning of the level you died in. However Naferia's Reign has it coded specfically that the latter is '''not''' an option. Even though one character dying is not [usually] grounds to force a restart or a save-reload, [[Total Party Kill|losing your entire party]] will make a "game over" screen pop up (with [[Mortal Kombat|Shao Kahn]] taunting you mercilessly, somehow...), where trying to restart like in the original Duke Nukem 3D will make you go back to the ''title screen'' and fully reset your game. This means you have to use save games, and use them well.

** Additionally, all types of hazards are programmed now in a way that you can submerge into them underwater and still take damage from them like a person probably should. There are also ways to use the game's editor to flag ''any'' sector to have the properties of damaging floors/liquids without actually making them look like such, for either certain types of underwater areas or 'disquised' floors to trick the player, or in one example, making constantly electrified water that will hurt you for wading around in it.

** Additionally, Cola and Snack vending machines are usuable in the modification by walking up to them and pressing the "use" button now. Cola machines restore 10% HP per drink, for $50 a drink, while Snack Machines restore 5% a snack, for $25 a snack.

*** A hillarious note is that all these [[NPC|NPCs]] can pickup items like Health, Armor, stat-increase bonuses, and even the one-time use powerups like the [[Invincibility Power-Up|Icon of the Defender]] or even a [[Quad Damage]], even though they don't move around and never directly attack enemies. If an NPC is holding an Icon of the Defender however, they are fatal on touch to any enemy character who is not holding one themself, but the player is completely safe from them regardless of this, since the NPC considers the player characters friendly to them [an Icon of the Defender's instant-kill aura only kills or hurts those the user considers hostile to them].

** [[NPC|NPCs]] can also use these, making them stationary instant-death obstacles to enemies (but not the player). A form of [[Cherry Tapping]], especially if the dog NPCs who premired in the original game's expansion pack are using one.

** The next closest to this is Lori. Her HP average starts a bit below-average [about 1100 HP], and she has a high starting attack and a very low starting defense, but as she progresses, her HP average will surpass most of the other non-alien characters' by levels 45 to 55 [even exceeding Duke and Lo Wang's HP levels confortably by Level 100], and her attack will skyrocket along with it. She's not so great at direct defense though even in light of this. Her speed is also pretty good after a point in time as well, even though she's only a bit above average to start off.

* [[Meat Shield]]: ESSence and Cybanis count as these. In perspective, while average HP characters like [[Duke Nukem|Duke]] and [[Shadow Warrior|Lo Wang]] have about 1500+ HP at level 1, these two start with ''8450+'' HP at level 1, although their statistical growths are different from each other, they are both still also pretty slow and don't have all that good jumping skill. ESSence can break the speed/jumping handicap by temporarily removing his specialized permenant armor attachment [which when used reduces damage to him by at least 60% on top of his defense stat's value at the cost of speed and jumping-strength]. Cybanis also has the extra advantage of having infinite wall-grappling/item-holding time over ESSence though.

* [[Money Spider]]: Played with in multiple ways. Most enemies drop at least a small amount of money on death [in recent versions, dropped money is represented by various sized money-bags in a [[Castlevania]] style hieracy of colors. Looking at a money bag will show you the amount in it], but a notable quirk is that the once-human Pigcops and their varients will drop a lot more money than most other monsters [since it makes sense former-humans might be carrying a lot more money, and the other aliens might just be collecting pocket change on the street to stop their human adversaries from being able to buy stuff to stop them], while Sharks, mounted Turrets and Riot Tanks won't drop a single penny (and yet, the Sentry Drone and Super Drone will drop a normal amount of money].

** The Mysterious Woman is also this for the most part, unless you look at a specfic magazine cover or use the debug-variables option in the Toggles Submenu. Why her name changes with debug mode on, we have no idea.

* [[Not Quite Flight]]: [[Bubsy]], keeping true to the series he was born from, can glide while in mid-air to prevent taking falling-damage/death, slowing him down to about 1/3 his falling speed. Appearantly the creator even paid extra attention to the fact you can't whore the skill out by trying to glide within a couple of feet from hitting the ground to avoid damage, since you slow down gradually to your glide speed instead of instantly applying it.

** A little known feature is that if Bubsy is dead when an extra life t-shirt is picked up, the first life accquired will be automatically consumed to bring him back to life upon pickup.

** The "Permenant Boost" items are a recent addition to some versions of the game. There are 9 types of them, and they work by giving a +2% boost to a certain type of thing, up to a max of +30% [one type of item allows healing items to heal an extra 2% more than normal per copy of the item, a second type of item increases the chance of picking up double the amount of an item by 2% per copy of the item]. The catch is that you can only actively use the effects of as many of each type of these items as ''the number of characters currently in your group, maxing out at 15''. They're extremely expensive to buy too if you decide to try that route to get them.

** There are also 27 specialized items that can be used as equippable items in the exact same vein as traditional [[JRP Gs]], except that these are solely "Accessories", not specfically armor or shields [some do resemble pieces of armor though]. One example is a ring that reduces fire/explosive damage by 25% each, while another is a badge that increases the amount of money picked up by double, while a final example is a machine that converts a fraction of HP damage dealt to the character using it into [[Mana|Energy Point]] recovery.

** Certain characters also have a list of usable skills from the in-game menu, mostly used for buffs or healing/resurrecting characters, or removing status ailments. Status buffs and ailments include a Haste buff, a Slow ailment, a Confusion ailment which makes a character's screen bob up and down and to the left and right controllable [an homage to [[Rise of the Triad]]'s "Shroom Mode"], a blindness-style condition making it hard to see, a poison ailment, a "shell" buff for damage reduction, an attack/defense buff, and then a couple of character-specfic buffs [Ami, Lori and Maken use these, such as Triad Refractor for Lori, a buff that cuts damage in half and deals the other half back to the attacker instantly for example]. One more recent buff is PK Shield (Paula's only support skill so far), an ability that will block and sometimes deflect the mindblasts of Octabrains and Cycloid Emperor-class monsters harmlessly.

* [[Scoring Points]]: RANK points, up until the newly released ''5.20'' of the modification, where for better or worse a glorfied score count for the player. However even before 5.20, it was possible to get ''negative'' RANK points if you really sucked at the game early on [although there were few ways to really lose a lot of RANK compared to ways to gain it]. 5.20 and on however now use RANK as a means to gauge your buy/sell benefits in shops, and a monetary payment from the EDF to any active player-characters' ATM accounts [a la the SeeD Rank system in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'']. RANK is gained by finding Memorbilia items, rescuing [[NPC|NPCs]], killing enemies [except normal Sharks], finding secret areas, and other such methods. You however can lose rank by accidentially or intentionally killing [[NPC|NPCs]] [monsters killing [[NPC|NPCs]] also gives a smaller RANK penalty to the player, but not as much as killing them yourself], killing the normal versions of the "Shark" monster, and as of 5.20, having a character die will deduct by far the most RANK from the player at once, generally 10% or more of your current value, making getting killed even more annoying than before.