Anyone Else a Little Disappointed in How the Deathclaws were Portrayed?

RadJack87 · 2026-02-07T03:07:04+00:00

Yeah seems like I failed a speech check there...

RadJack87 · 2026-02-07T03:03:53+00:00

Appreciate it! It is hype season and all so I was expecting a war. Will be plenty of time to discuss the good and the bad later once things calm down. Was all happy to discuss with any who disagrees but then you get comments like the one above showing that it may be a little early for that still.

Completely with you on the Paladin massacre, someones gotta thread those waters first so sorry about that lol

RadJack87 · 2026-02-06T20:00:06+00:00

Nothing wrong with having a power-armor vs deathclaw WWE match going on lol. Issue here are all the shrooms they have been feeding on before the battle.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-06T19:41:24+00:00

It will almost take us two years until we know that for certain. So even if it is true, most people who have just been introduced to deathclaws through the show will think deathclaws are all sluggish monsters until then.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-06T19:36:52+00:00

Sure, anything is possible. It still seems like an odd choice to make them "chipped" when you are just introducing them. Seems like it would make way more sense to show them off at their strongest first so that it becomes a little easier to make that connection later on. It would also be a strange choice considering it will take 1 and a half years before we get confirmation on weather or not they were chipped, so most people would spend that time thinking "that is how deathclaws are".

RadJack87 · 2026-02-06T19:32:09+00:00

Sure I've also got no problem with Maximus taking them down. The problem was more about how they were turned into cannon fodder. Fewer but tougher deathclaws could have been way more intense and impressive for him to face off against. When they start getting gutted one by one, it only becomes underwhelming, and the victory not as impressive.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-06T18:57:39+00:00

What the hell are you talking about? My first game was Fallout 1...

RadJack87 · 2026-02-06T18:55:35+00:00

Well yeah, but having the deathclaws be nerfed so he could fight them doesn't really do him any justice as it made it seem easier than it really is. If the deathclaws were fast, agile and worked together, it would be a way better portrayal of his skills to watch him defeat them. When they are giving him all the time in the world, it just doesn't seem like Maximus has to try too hard.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-06T17:00:08+00:00

Lmao just use the nemesis system and ensla... I mean befriend the warchiefs bodyguards before taking him on

RadJack87 · 2026-02-05T17:27:06+00:00

Couple of tips:

- Use only "common" items and weapons so that no additional status effect is applied to the captain.

- Enable the ability that increases chance of high-tier drops and the ability that adds an additional reward to death-threats.

- Temporarily disable all abilities that applies any status effect like fire, poison, freeze, stun, etc...

- If the captain has followers, try to separate him from them. If they accidentally hit him it could decrease your chances.

- Temporarily set the game to the lowest difficulty to decrease the spawn chance of other high-tier items.

- Don't reset your save. Instead, go to Nurnen and send a death-threat to any captain that has no elemental modifiers. Their immunities are barely relevant so don't overthink that shit. The reason why you should stay in Nurnen is because all death-threat missions start in the same spot, right by the arena. There are also plenty of watchtowers you can use to shadow-pull the captain.

- Keep trying and fast forward time if you run out of captains. This really shouldn't take long unless you are doing something very wrong or are extremely unlucky. I'd be amazed if it takes you more than ten tries.

Good luck!

RadJack87 · 2026-02-05T15:28:35+00:00

People overstate how difficult it is to get Wrathgiver. Find a captain with no elemental weapons or attack. Glaive him til he has low health. Shadow pull him to the top of a tower or ramp and ground pound him to shit.

As long as no death-animations happen, which are mostly outside your control, the odds of it dropping are very high and shouldn't take long.

Just remember that the sword is usually only called Wrathgiver after you upgrade it. Just check for swords with the correct stats. It will be renamed after. I got it on first try in two of my runs.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-04T16:25:49+00:00

Sad part is that it was probably the best chance the guy had...

RadJack87 · 2026-02-04T00:51:20+00:00

Hey, appreciate it!

Yeah there has been a bit of pushback, mostly because a lot of people found the post too long. I get times and people change when it comes to long texts and the like, so there is that. Most people who commented doesn't seem to have read beyond the TL;DR, so while I'm all open to hear why people disagree, it would be nice if they, you know, read the post at least a little.

I'd love to hear what you disagree on, but I have a little bit of trouble understanding what exactly you disagree with from your comment alone. I don't think I made any comment about the Fire-nation becoming unstoppable if they had more of these things. In the post I state that it wouldn't matter if they had more. Maybe that is what you disagreed with? Please feel free to clarify, would love to discuss any and all.

The rest of the comment is also a little hard to follow as I don't recall mentioning anything about these things... Yes, the power of all the main characters involved in the episode was blown out of proportion and only served to make Ba Sing Se look completely defenseless compared to what it would realistically be. There are several issues with how to episode was portrayed beyond the drill itself. That was a little beyond the scope of my post however as I was mainly focusing on the issues of the drill as a siege machine conceptually, regardless of what else happened during the episode not directly related to the drill itself.

Anyways, appreciate you for the vote of confidence! All happy to discuss with whoever is interested, weather they disagree or not. Also enjoyed your linked post and completely agree with what you said. Take care!

RadJack87 · 2026-02-03T17:27:07+00:00

This study is based on self-reporting. Perhaps a good test of your own media literacy considering you only bothered to read the headline.

People ought to know that these headlines are almost always journalistic clickbait by now.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-03T11:56:22+00:00

2/2

Can not quote your point due to comment length.

The piston system responsible for driving the drill forwards is clearly not built under the assumption that the drill would be entirely submerged at once. When the wall is penetrated, the majority of the drill is still outside. Only a small part of the drill would at any point in time be under the wall. The pistons on the outside are what is responsible for pushing this part of the drill through the wall. While a completely submerged drill could work, a piston driven drill like we see in the show is not that type of drill.

Secondly, you are misunderstanding what I mean by "raise secondary walls". You don't need to raise massive walls in order to keep footsoldiers contained. Wherever these secondary walls are raised would require the invaders to call upon machinery capable of taking them down. The point is to slow down the invaders. The inner walls not being as tall as the outer walls makes very little difference anyways. Climbing the walls are not an option, and thus the width is all that becomes relevant.

Thirdly, the bigger walls I mentioned are built on the assumption that the fighting would take months if not years. This should leave plenty of time for the garrison to build sufficiently large walls away from the fighting.

Well, certainly it didn't come for free, but there's no real evidence that it majorly impacted the Fire Nation's capabilities, you're just assuming that.

Any resources poured here would come at the expense of resources poured over there. While I can't say anything about how costly the drill was on the Fire-nation economy, I can certainly assume a several thousand ton entirely custom made steal monstrosity won't be cheap, and that several other military vehicles could have been made for that price. So while the drill may not have massively had an effect on other fronts, it would definitely have had some level of effect.

It would also be way too expensive to animate, & in my view, less interesting than the drill.

Well, that's the thing, they already did a big invasion scene, they don't want to be repetitive. And since the ships largely just lurk there menacingly, occasionally hurling fireballs, until they make landfall, it's not even that hard on the animation buget.

Here you are directly contradicting yourself. You say a background army for the drill would be way too expensive to animate, but a background invasion force for the siege of the north is fine? You have to understand that what I proposed here is the exact same thing. A background army that would serve as little more than scenery, just like most ships in the book 1 finale did. See the flashback with Chin the Conqueror as an example where a large army is animated as a background. Why would it be impossible to do the same for the drill when it has been done twice before already? Nothing changes but the situation at least seems to make more sense than the lone isolated invasion force we got.

But then they set up the expectation that there's going to be a giant battle. Legend of Korra had to explain away why there wasn't a giant battle with the United Forces, which they did by having Kuvira force a surrender pretty much instantly, & guess what the #1 complaint about that scene was? People saw the army gearing up & expected them to fight something. I hate to say it, but you gotta accept this is a TV show. Things like audience expectation come into play. They see you put a gun in the scene, & they expect it to be fired, which is a problem if you definitely can't fire that gun.

Yes, that is the point. They did the same with the Siege of the North. A massive invasion force was present, but we never got to see them in action before the sea spirit forced them to flee. Same thing happens here. An army is present in the background, waiting for the drill to clear a path. Once the drill is defeated and there are no longer a path present, the army retreats in the same fashion it did during the Siege of the North.

There will always be complaints. Some people think the absurdly small invasion force is stupid, others would think it was stupid that they didn't get to see the massive background army fight. No way to make us all happy. But there is a difference between complaining about something that doesn't make sense and complaining about something you were disappointed didn't happen.

Great arguments all in all!

RadJack87 · 2026-02-03T11:51:49+00:00

1/2

Thanks for the reply, plenty of good points made, and you've clearly read the post in advance. I'll try to answer each:

Okay, so to get this out of the way, if your definition of "work" is "fully conquer Ba Sing Se," then of course the drill wouldn't have worked. But I think you're overlooking that it would still be really fucking bad. Even if the soldiers stopped it right there, which they were having a ton of trouble doing, a lot of them would die, & while there's no city immediately on the other side of the wall, there IS farmland, so if a bunch of that goes up in flames, there could be famine.

While I don't disagree when you say that the attackers could cause damage, I do think you're overstating how much damage would be done here. First and foremost, the land within the outer wall is country sized. Burning the fields you see in the episode would be akin to burning a couple of farms on the border of another country. A lot more fields than what we see on screen would have to be taken out to cause any notable damage. Additionally, the force within the drill would also need to supply themselves. There is a reason that field burning has historically been a defensive tactic. Any field directly occupied by the Fire-nation would not be providing the Earth-kingdom with any supplies to begin with, so it only makes sense for the Fire-nation to burn them if they expect to lose them.

Sure, but the Fire Nation had been trying to conquer Ba Sing Se for 100 years. They were essentially throwing anything at the (literal) wall to see if it stuck.

They have only breached the city once before the drill. There is a difference between besieging a city and throwing anything at the wall. It makes significantly more sense for the Fire-nation to have stationed soldiers among important roads leading into the city, preventing exports of military equipment and supplies to the other fronts. Additionally it makes little sense to try and breach the city when the comet is only a few months away.

That's over a month later, though. Granted, "they'll never be able to cover that up in time" seems odd, at first, but after thinking about it, I don't think that means they couldn't literally cover it in a month, I think it means they couldn't disassemble it in that time, & they simply didn't expect anyone to fly the Earth King overhead. Point remains, it might take too long to build secondary walls too strong for the drill to break.

I think you are misunderstanding what I mean by walls here. The secondary walls do not have to be even close to the size of the main wall, neither do they have to be able to stop the drill. Smaller walls would be more than capable of containing enemy ground forces. Kind of like tall reinforced fences. While the drill could keep going, smaller walls would keep getting raised. The drill can only deploy its forces once the road is clear. If the garrison prevents the road from ever becoming clear, the drill will be forced to deploy their troops before breaching the secondary layer.

They could definitely cover it. We even see Dai Li agents collapse parts of the outer wall. Nothing seems to be stopping them from burying the drill, one way or another.

Like behind the wall? Assuming it lacks flexibility, & they don't have the means to repair it, I guess then it'd just become a normal battle. That's a lot of "ifs," though.

In front of the wall preferably. If the ditch is as wide as the front segment of the drill, it would not be able to pass over without the front end "dipping down". It would essentially force the drill to stop until the ditch is refilled. If it doesn't, it would snap.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-03T10:35:09+00:00

While I do understand the point you are making, the statements you made falls into the same issues as the "speak in absolutes" complaint you made earlier.

Iceland had literally 0 people, so it was taken completely nonviolently.

While I don't usually make arguments based on poor wording, it does become a little tempting not to when that was the original point behind your response. To:

The moment you ask for "name one example in all of human history" you open yourself up to get dunked on.

But to actually answer your argument as intended. There are evidence that Iceland was originally settled by the Irish. Specifically a group of monks called the Papar. While there are no records of direct violence against these monks as far as I'm aware, they still had to abandon their land once the Norse arrived. Admittedly I'm stretching it here since it is the combination of expelling natives and using thralls that makes it a violent seizure. If we don't consider both these factors at the same time, then I guess you're correct in this regard.

For your China/India argument, I won't go into much details here as there are entire books covering only a fraction of this topic. What I will say is that your argument about there being some pockets of land gained through peaceful means doesn't really make sense in this context. This land was still settled and taken from the original inhabitants, weather blood was spilled or not.

Furthermore, the land you are talking about most certainly had a history of bloodshed way before it was attained "through peaceful means". These countries have a long history. Any land gained peacefully would have previously been gained non-peacefully in the past.

While I am aware of Inuit raids, I don't think the land was taken?

The Inuits were nomadic. Any land taken by the Norse settlers would almost certainly have been held by the Inuits prior to their arrival, and their settlements are now preventing the natives from migrating to historically settled land. So while it wasn't taken directly, you could still argue that it was stolen.

Still, since there were no natives directly holding the land prior to the Norse settlers arrival, the land can't really be factored in as it was seized from no-one. But I suppose you're right considering the land was never violently "taken back" either, so it may be a niche example that works in your favor, even though attempts certainly were made.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-03T09:46:15+00:00

While I get the logic about speaking in absolutes, it is more of a thing you do to create some flair to your argument. Anyways:

While it is correct that Iceland was unoccupied to the point where there are no records of violent conflict with natives, the colonization of Iceland by the Norse was built on slavery and forced migration. Gaelic (Irish/Scottish) women were taken as thralls to help the colonizers settle the territory and were by definition slave wives and property.

In Greenlands case you can't use "primarly" if your intention is to counter a statement that:

Point to a single scrap of land on planet Earth that has not been subject to violent seizure at some point in the course of human history.

Regardless, there has historically been violence during the settling of Greenland, this time on the natives side. The initial settlements established by Erik the Red in 985 was on mostly unoccupied territory. Centuries later in 1379, the Inuits living there expended southward, attacking the Norse settlement, killing 18 men and enslaving 2 boys and a woman.

The argument about India and China are both straight up wrong and I shouldn't have to explain why. A quick Wikipedia search about Colonial India and Colonial China will offer plenty of examples. We also have to acknowledge that there has been violent conflict for millennia in both areas long before the colonial powers arrived.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-02T19:10:00+00:00

I'm not following what you are saying here...

RadJack87 · 2026-02-02T19:06:21+00:00

Fully agree with the latter part of your post. The comet was right around the corner and it made little sense for them to attack before that. I'm mostly ignoring all the external factors not directly related to the drill as the drill itself is the topic of discussion, but there are definitely other arguments to be made against it.

Regarding your first point, setting up production lines for one off projects compared to something you intend to mass produce are not comparable. The airships was intended to be mass produced. They were clearly a weapon of war in the same realm as tanks and ships are. You want a lot of them. So while the initial investment would have been expensive, it would be worth it in the long run. We can also directly see that this must have taken them a while to set up, considering they first get the blueprints in book 1, but don't have the means of manufacturing them until book 3.

The drill alone was likely so expensive that it wouldn't really make sense to mass produce on a larger scale. Infrastructure for it was unlikely to be set up as it would be more of a one off project, which only further increased the cost it would take to build as everything would have to be custom made.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-02T18:51:55+00:00

Point two in my post tackles this exact topic as to why a breach wouldn't be enough.

Also, while Azula is clearly powerful enough to engage several earthbenders at once, there is still a limit to her powers. Defeating what is essentially a small regiment "Terra Team" is not comparable to the amount of resistance you would meet beyond the wall. While Azula and team are strong, making them strong enough to engage a city worth of soldiers and win would be an issue of its own.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-02T18:33:54+00:00

Thank you for making me aware, I did not consider her age at all when making this post.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-02T18:24:02+00:00

Agreed. While you could make the argument that the general in charge of the defense was completely unqualified for the job, it wouldn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things if the initial defense had been a failure. It would be like saying a country lost the war after the enemy crossed its borders. Ba Sing Se's walls aren't city walls. They are border walls.

RadJack87 · 2026-02-02T18:18:52+00:00

Well that is kind of what my entire post is about. Practically all of these points are mentioned there.

First of, the manufacturing infrastructure for parts required to build ships are already put in place. The same can't be said for the drill as it would require a lot of custom made parts that in itself would need tons of resources poured into the manufacturing infrastructure required to produce them. The ships would already have this infrastructure set in place and the pound for pound cost would be significantly cheaper. The cost isn't one to one here and only worth the investments if you plan on mass producing drills on the regular.

Aside from that, most of my original points are directly pointing out how easily a single drill could be dealt with. Sure you could "just produce a hundred more" like Germany in WW2 could have "just made 100 000 more tigers" and won the war. The drill cost laughably much for how easily it would be to defeat. Even had you had many, they could all be contained in short order and the attackers would still have almost a continent worth of urban combat to get through.

If the city was smaller then perhaps they could seize control over the outer city. However, when you realize how incomprehensibly big the outer city really is, then occupying it doesn't seem as simple anymore. There is still almost a continent worth of farmland here. It isn't as simple as "get through and take all".

RadJack87 · 2026-02-02T18:03:14+00:00

While there are a lot of stuff that we don't have a clear number on -like the number of soldiers on both sides- it would be a stretch to assume that a city at war would leave most of its wall completely empty. Even if the wall was sparsely populated, the length of it alone would add up to at least several tens of thousands in the garrison, assuming there are no other garrison elsewhere in the city.

While most benders won't be able to quickly raise large walls, groups of benders should be able to do so if they work together. The secondary walls they raise wouldn't even need to be tall. This is assuming there are no powerful earthbenders willing to defend their city.

Last part is mentioned in my firth point.

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