#RA2 secret rooms

[hexdrake]

Ulpianus's third skill is highly unusual even among the lockpicking-enabled operators, and makes him extremely good for picking a single hard to reach door. Unlike Kafka, Goldenglow, and Wiš'adel, you don't need to worry as much about placement, because he occupies the entire line of his attack during the initial activation.

However, it has some weirdness to it. Basically, when Ulpianus activates his skill, he occupies the six squares in front of him (allowing him to break blocks in any of the seven squares in front of him), but the damage itself does not reach the full distance. The damage is an area attack with radius 1.8 centered on the first enemy (or resource node) he hits in his dash. This means that you can break walls with the following rules:

As long as there is at most one tile between his first target (be it an enemy or a resource node) and the wall, it will break. If there's a two-block gap, he can't touch it.

This means that he can be used very similarly to Kafka (and in fact breaks at the same range as her, and a little further potentially), but as he's not a fast-redeploy, he won't be able to do it more than once or maybe twice per entry into a map. However, he can break walls blocked by further gaps than her, and can potentially do some tricksy stuff Goldenglow and Wishie can't, so it's definitely worth keeping in mind if you have him.

(Thank you @hero-king-baybe for the recordings! I don't have Ulpianus, so him getting this footage was very helpful.)

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Origin of the Coinage of “Inciting Incident”

Inciting incident is likely, as an idea from Gustav Freytag. I established, this already. This kicked around with other writers who refused to give him credit. But the exact phrase and coinage of “Inciting Incident” is unfortunately from a very, very racist source. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but I had a good run recently with you know, reading Brecht, and then the Rev Jesse Ketchum Brennan.

I asked for further help to find this (a Division of NYPL), because I was having trouble. And then I thought I was out of the woods... and then clicked the link and boom. WTF. I’m not going to eat my own words where I say something like I’m not going to present it to you... because then we don’t describe how problematic this is.

What I’m going to do is slap it with a CONTENT WARNING: Racism But for my own mental health and those of others, I’m refusing to screen cap the extremely racist portion. Describing why it’s racist, will also sound racist, so... ummm... I’m also refusing to do that work. Generally racist, but probably especially racist towards Indigenous peoples. And NO, it was not the times. It was 1913. Civil rights movement had LONG started.

I’m going to screen cap and type up the description portion. (Which is tolerable). I will link the original, but be in a good place and brace yourself before you click. The first paragraph is a doozy and it’s a long time before it gets better: https://books.google.com/books?id=US8DAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA2-PA266&dq=%22inciting+incident%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiitr2q0ff8AhW7FVkFHXAFBjgQ6AF6BAgHEAI#v=onepage&q=%22inciting%20incident%22&f=false (You have to scroll up to see the beginning of the story)

Text Preliminary material: Expository.

Inciting incident: Robert hears that Olga is coming.

First moment of suspense: He waits for her arrival.

Cause of Crisis: He learns to like her.

Crisis: He overturns a glass of milk at table, due to a recent acquired freedom of movement.

Moment of final suspense: Robert is sent into the dark room where Olga sympathetically follows him.

Climax: Robert leans great secret.

Speedy Conclusion.

Paratext

Author is Elias Lieberman. (Crying about the fact he’s a Russian Jew and published this racist piece of garbage, but also explains why he was subsumed.).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Lieberman Short stories were the rage way back when, so there were a lot of instruction manuals and such, so by 1913, when this was published, there were a lot of manuals on how to write them and theories.

So history-wise, this is still before WWI, and also before Nazis, though hate against Jews, as outlined by Freytag was still high. This gives him motivation to not cite Freytag. Freytag started off hating Jews and saying anti-semitic things about Jews in the Technique of Drama until he married a Jew and still said sketchy things about Jews and still wanted to exterminate Polish people.

https://www.coreknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/CKHG_G6_B2_U7_Immigration_FE1_IAmAnAmerican.pdf

He lived and worked in a time of segregation in the US. But there is not a single peep about any objections to it in any of the sources I can find. In fact, he retired as a principal the year that school segregation ended (1954). This is red flag territory for me. (Psst I think he was racist because notice the poem is missing bits.)

He lived halfway through the 1960′s too... so umm... so many questions there. I give people to have leeway to change, but there is not a single word about him trying to help in any shape or form. Also kinda embarrassing that Jews don’t talk about the problematic bits of him. I do think we need to talk about the complications of our heroes.

The irony is that I think he was subsumed and not credited because he was Jewish, not because he’s racist. I’m at a loss what to say further than this... but ummm... I hope deeply that he’s not related to my Jewish family. I realllly hope so. I’m crying over here about the fact he was so upset about integration that he retired.  Excuse me while I read more Brecht. I disagree with him a lot, but it’s a fun disagreement and he’s rather uplifting to read in an odd way.

[hexdrake]

Did you know: Kafka's s2 can damage secret entrances in Reclamation Algorithm without being next to them? And that her s2m3 does enough damage to break them in two hits?

While this video is only a demonstration of the principle, this makes her one of the most valuable units in RA2 for exploring some of the more complex maps, especially in strange territories where they often put resources like trees, rocks, or iron between deployable tiles and the breakable walls to force you to spend time mining them before you can open up secret rooms.

Finally, a reason to promote Kafka past e0!

[hexdrake]

With all the secret room lockpicking I've been posting, you might be wondering what kind of aoe effect doesn't break walls, because there are a fair few that do. The answer to this is... weird. Like, really weird. The attached video is a grab bag that shows what I mean:

Lin and other phalanx casters (true AoE) will break walls if they are adjacent, but not otherwise, just like any other operator.

Likewise (not in the video, forgot to record), true aoe from ambushers won't break walls unless they're right next to the wall.

Reapers, even those with a range extension, won't break walls unless next to them. This will apply even if there's an enemy next to the wall.

Degenbrecher's S3 and similar skills can't break walls unless she's next to them.

Oddly, Eyjafjalla's s2 does break walls in the same way that artillerymen and fortress defenders do; if there's an enemy next to the wall, the aoe will break the wall.

Jessica the Liberated's s3 explosion can damage and break walls.

Splash casters do not break walls, even if there's an enemy next to them.

As far as I can tell, what it comes down to is whether or not an operator's ranged aoe attack makes an object as a projectile that will then go into the tile of the target enemy and explode. If it just 'summons an explosion' on them as with splash casters, or if it hits everything in the area as a true aoe, it won't do anything unless the operator is right next to the wall.

[hexdrake]

Wiš'adel being Wiš'adel of course means she's also able to lockpick breakable walls like Goldenglow and Kafka can. Because why would this unit not have every trick in the book? She's a lot less reliable for this, though.

The way it works is that first, she or one of her turrets must attack a node or enemy adjacent to the breakable wall:

This will put an 'afterimage' onto the target, which can then be detonated with either Wiš's normal crit talent (15% chance on hit) or her third skill, which increases the chance of detonating an afterimage to 100%.

This results in a little bonus explosion that can damage the breakable wall:

As a whole, I don't consider Wishie to be very good at lockpicking compared to Kafka and Goldenglow, due to Kafka being able to break walls without visible enemies or resource nodes next to them, and Goldenglow being able to do it anywhere on the map with some setup. Still, if you have her she's a great tool in your arsenal here, and like... she's Wiš'adel. She's broken strong so if you're using her you're using her, and if not you're not.

[hexdrake]

All artillerymen snipers (Fiammetta, W, Jieyun, Meteorite, Sesa, Shirayuki, and Catapult) can damage breakable walls if their actual target is in an adjacent tile, just like fortress defenders. Fiammetta, however, is a real winner: both her S2 and her S3 will break all walls in the area regardless of her targeting area, the center of their aoes, and so on. Lemuen should add "Safecracker" to her list of nicknames, jeez.

[hexdrake]

All fortress defenders (Horn, Ashlock, Firewhistle) are capable of breaking hidden walls if they fire a shot at a unit directly adjacent to the wall. Note though that these units will sometimes have wonky targeting if there are multiple things to shoot, and shooting something diagonally next to a breakable wall will not work to open the secret room.

[hexdrake]

Like Kafka, Goldenglow is also extremely good at "lockpicking" in RA2. As with everyone's favorite jackdaw, Susie has the unique ability to attack breakable walls while outside of an adjacent tile. I believe that this is because while her skills are active, she releases her drones, causing them to build up in the tile of her target. Then, when they explode, the damage is "coming from an adjacent tile" from the breakable wall's perspective. This works for all of her skills, but is most useful with her S1 (when you need to kill a particular wall in range of a high tile) or her S3 (for breaking walls across the map).

As shown here, it's particularly useful on Vanilla Vale (from the new beast hunting zones), because its extremely valuable hidden room is meant to be accessed via the Exoskeleton toolkit item:

This would let your ranged units gather the tree's resources as they break it, thus opening up the melee tile adjacent to the breakable wall.

But, yanno, Susie bypasses it. Go Susie! Kafka's lockpicking partner in crime.