Why was Lamia removed?

[Knight9910]

Not that I'm upset or anything, I'm just curious. Why was Lamia removed from the game?

[khalil]

According to the devlogs, she's just a statboosted naga, which they didn't find to be that interesting.

[Tiktacy]

According to the devlogs, she's just a statboosted naga, which they didn't find to be that interesting.

Well, they removed her because the devs thought she was too similar to Boris, and her power balance was so out of place in snake pits. She also supposedly gave the devs some difficult with the eating-nagas mechanic since they were adding so many new nagas to the game at the time they removed her.

I think ultimately, the devs just didn't want to work at keeping her functioning since they felt it wasn't needed with all the new nagas coming in. They are also very defensive about this topic, the last two threads were locked by devs saying it wasn't going anywhere even though most everyone aside from duvessa and dck thought she was an interesting unique and gave a plethora of ideas to improve her or reimplement her.

She was probably my favorite unique in the game until they removed her, so I fully support her reimplementation.

[khalil]

Eating nagas? Did she do that? All I remember was she cast conj spells at people.

[duvessa]

wow

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Uh, they weren't even adding new nagas at the time Lamia was removed. Lamia ate corpses, and I have no idea how new monsters could in any way interfere with that.

Lamia did nothing interesting at all. She was functionally identical to a greater naga except she hit harder and had more hp. On top of that, she had the Gastronok Problem TM, which is slow movement combined with massive damage output, such that any character can simply walk away from Lamia in virtually any situation, and doing so is always obviously the best choice. Even the rune vault that had Lamia inside it was boring and stupid; unless you think leading a unique a few hundred steps across the level and then doubling back is fun, i suppose.

[Tiktacy]

Uh, they weren't even adding new nagas at the time Lamia was removed. Lamia ate corpses, and I have no idea how new monsters could in any way interfere with that.

Lamia did nothing interesting at all. She was functionally identical to a greater naga except she hit harder and had more hp. On top of that, she had the Gastronok Problem TM, which is slow movement combined with massive damage output, such that any character can simply walk away from Lamia in virtually any situation, and doing so is always obviously the best choice. Even the rune vault that had Lamia inside it was boring and stupid; unless you think leading a unique a few hundred steps across the level and then doubling back is fun, i suppose.

I'm pretty sure she was removed around the same time(within a week or two) as the nagas were announced. I could be wrong though.

Either way, the reasoning doesn't make sense. You can do the same thing with almost any unique if you have above average speed. Even then, the fix would be simple as changing her speed to normal.

[twelwe]

becasue of the lame fanfic losers it attracted

[WalkerBoh]

Lamia was removed because Vashnia ate her.

[Hirsch I]

becasue of the lame fanfic losers it attracted

I'm sorry.

[cerebovssquire]

Uh, they weren't even adding new nagas at the time Lamia was removed. Lamia ate corpses, and I have no idea how new monsters could in any way interfere with that.

Lamia did nothing interesting at all. She was functionally identical to a greater naga except she hit harder and had more hp. On top of that, she had the Gastronok Problem TM, which is slow movement combined with massive damage output, such that any character can simply walk away from Lamia in virtually any situation, and doing so is always obviously the best choice. Even the rune vault that had Lamia inside it was boring and stupid; unless you think leading a unique a few hundred steps across the level and then doubling back is fun, i suppose.

I'm pretty sure she was removed around the same time(within a week or two) as the nagas were announced. I could be wrong though.

Either way, the reasoning doesn't make sense. You can do the same thing with almost any unique if you have above average speed. Even then, the fix would be simple as changing her speed to normal.

There is a difference between any character (save chei and Na) being able to walk away and only characters with above average speed to walk away. A monster to whom the former applies is only relevant for a small minority while more characters care about the latter.
With regards to fixing Lamia by raising her speed, at that point power level might become a problem, and regardless, the other criticism in the post you quoted still applies and is probably the more important criticism of her anyway.

[damiac]

Well I just fought Lamia in V 15 trunk, in the spider nest of all places, so I guess she's back. I fought her toe to toe, like a true idiot, and I won, despite my poor choice.