‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 449

Colors by Audrey. Everything else is by me.

Two monumental happenings on this page.

69 Comments

I call that we’re about to see the Ha! Special.

Currently I’m kinda torn. On the one hand it would be interesting to see Kat somehow overcoming these overwhelming odds, but on the other hand I want Kat to learn a lesson regarding the fighting of team members while facing the enemy just for some Erbana points. She may be good, but she can’t be invincible without hacking. I hope those five aren’t just going to fall easily to Kat, because 1 vs 5 would be kinda exaggerating it (so I don’t think it’s gonna happen, no matter how much of a genius she is). Also they do look real interesting, so I’d like to see them stick around for a while. As for their alignments I estimate:

– The girl is definitely the Demoli whom Bandit sensed and who talked to them.
– Far right is Kesti, because sword + armor = adventurer
– The Monk is Mani, because the staff with the pupil-ish thing looks hypnotic. He might have a couple of Erbana points, too, just to get the bag of unlimited item holding, because a Mani is probably able to take out enemies in a semi-Erbana way, e.g. mind control, instead of fighting directly, thus mostly keeping his Erbana points.
– Blue-haired guy is… Morto or Kesti. Kinda looks like an adventurer, too, but could also be a hulky barbarian-ish type who goes on a murderous rampage every so often. So I call Morto.
– Far left is… well, he’s equipped as poorly as the girl and as Bandit and Dude, so either another Demoli or a Cardista (certainly not Erbana). So I call Demoli, because in that case it’s a Villain group regardless of what blue-haired guy is. But I would prefer to have one Cardista in the enemy group as well, just so Dude can do a Yugioh-battle with him. 😉 No, not really, I don’t expect Cardista to work like that in the Game.

But I do hope that the Dude is finally going to reveal what he can do. I mean, every Blob who watched his preliminaries knows it already (or at least the stuff he showed to the public back then), but the reader is still completely in the dark. I call that soon things become dire for Kat and that he’s then going to help out in an Erbana-friendly way, probably after whispering to Danni what she can and can’t do.

I don’t think he has quite the fatalistic view of this situation, but with him you never know how much if his behavior is an act. Besides hitting his head on a tree branch, that is.

I’m furthermore calling Jane trying to backstab some of those guys, but as always Kat sees it coming and prevents it somehow, thus making her situation ultimately more difficult.

Btw: Panel 2 probably spiked the spectator count for Bandit. 😀 And yes, I know she’s wearing proper trousers. 😉

“Just some Erbana points” means a lot when it’s the matter of not getting the perfect, which is the whole reason she’s playing this game in the first place.

Yyyyyeeeaah, I think her 100% score is going to drop eventually, if only temporarily, if the Game goes on as difficult as it does. Also I estimate that you can slowly gain points by gathering plants and making potions, so keeping the 100% wouldn’t be a big deal to me.

As far as I can tell, that’s not how it works – you need to keep meeting challenges of the alignment as your percentage raises. If you can’t do the no killing allowed thing, no matter how many plants you gather, you aren’t keeping the 100%. Now, if you allow someone to get killed in 1 conflict and then resolve the next 10 peacefully, that will probably allow you to recover lost points…

[[Currently I’m kinda torn. On the one hand it would be interesting to see Kat somehow overcoming these overwhelming odds, but on the other hand I want Kat to learn a lesson regarding the fighting of team members while facing the enemy just for some Erbana points. She may be good, but she can’t be invincible without hacking.]]

Kat was incredibly good even without hacking, if my memory serves. And she doesn’t need to learn a lesson, she’s doing what she’s supposed to. It’s Bandit who was going off the rails purposefully to push her. People are really coming down on her over this and it’s starting to get a little annoying. You’ve got a big post here and it starts and ends with “Kat should fail because she’s not letting people kill things.” Lighten up!

lol, Dude, it’s you who should lighten up a bit. The *right* thing to do would have been to talk this through when Sandra inquired about it, but none of them did. I never wrote “Kat should fail”. Calm down an re-read. 😀 The only thing I wrote is that I don’t want her to take down the 5 of them just like that, because overwhelming odds are overwhelming in a Game that was made with the intent to balance the classes, Specials or not. Maybe you shouldn’t have skipped over the rest of the post, because it looks like you’re assuming that it was all about me wishing for her to die horribly or something, but the beginning and the second last paragraph were actually the only parts where I addressed this topic at all.

Also while I haven’t read ALL of the comments from the previous pages, I read many of them and I didn’t see masses of people wanting her to go down or something.

Of course Bandit should learn a lesson, too. 🙂 And BM. I never liked that both of them intend to somehow win her trust by annoying her, because that’s kinda the opposite of what you’re supposed to do. But I like the interaction that results from it.

The Game may be designed for balance among player classes, but these guys know nothing about what an Erbana can do. Erbana’s seem to take on the traits of the class that controls the island they’re on which allows them a wider variety of abilities, even if those abilities are somewhat weaker than those specializing in that class. A mani island gives Kat everything she needs to fight without killing.

There’s also the issue of player skill in a class. Bandit, as a 100% demoli, has significantly stronger specials than the other group’s demoli was able to use before. Kat even told Danni earlier that level and class percentage are often the same thing. So a 100% erbana on a mani island is typically only vulnerable to a high level mani.

The main lesson that Kat needs to learn isn’t how to work with a team that’s actively opposing her, it’s that being good doesn’t necessarily mean not hacking or killing in the game. Kat was a spoiled child lured into doing something extreme and she doesn’t know how to act to convince people she’s not a monster. That lesson can’t be taught this early on, but Kat can do something awesome to take out a whole team at once boosting her team’s viewer numbers. It would be bad writing to have her loose now, even just a temporary loss, just to teach her to cooperate with people that intentionally antagonize her.

Well, ok, Kat was provoked into doing that. Can’t blame her much for reacting this way. Bandit and her are putting the group as a whole at risk by bickering amongst themselves and being stubborn. I just kinda want them to learn that this is something you just shouldn’t do when facing a potentially more experienced group that knows how to work as a team. It would be anti-climactic if Kat could take care of them all by herself.

But yes, they probably don’t know much about Erbana, because it hasn’t been played properly for years, according to Bandit, so they’re likely in for a bunch of surprises, but I do hope that they can be more than a bunch of victims needed to introduce the Ha! Special and that the others get some action, too, especially the Dude. I mean, unless the group is a bunch of noobs I expect them to have done some research on Jane’s group, including Erbana, before attacking them, so they really should be able to hold their grounds for a while.

But I don’t believe that Kat and Bandit are super strong just because they did well on the tutorial, even though level and alignment percentage are often the same. That would be OP. They likely are stronger than average, having some high-alignment-benefits, but they shouldn’t be able to take out any number of non-high-level characters just because of a high alignment.

Also I wonder if Kat really had lost any points from letting Bandit attack, because that would mean that he had a killing blow in his hand and that the other group would be in serious danger of losing some team mate(s) from it. Since Kat sensed them first she probably knows their strength…. aaaand I guess I’m going to stop rooting for them now even though they look so cool and brace myself for a quick and “nice” good-bye. But I don’t really want to believe that…

The killing blow would be to The Dude, not an enemy. The “Knight’s Sacrifice” was a reference to him & his very low life points at the moment. So whatever Bandit was about to do was an area attack, that would have caused some damage to everyone, thus killing The Dude’s game avatar and breaking Kat’s perfect alignment.

The group IS a bunch of noobs.
http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-444/
“Someone obviously hasn’t played for long”.

I thought that was just Bandit taunting the other group while letting their own as well as viewers know what was going on, so as to draw suspicions away from Kat.

Well, he wouldn’t have lied about the Special being one of the premade ones, so they couldn’t have explored the whole Game yet.
Or, returning to the original point, they couldn’t have done any research on the Erbana alignment, either.

I’m pretty sure Alignment is similar to achievements,; the higher your alignment, the more abilities, both passive and active, you unlock. Meaning, a higher alignment gives you stat boosts and access to better specials. There might also be something about how long you are stay, or keep, your alignment at, and/or above, a certain percentage.

With that said, yeah, they are better then the average mooks,

Huh. I think the monk is the Demoli.
This Group having three or more villains is the only actually obvious thing, though. We’ll have to wait and see to know their Alignments for sure.

Okay, interesting choice for the Monk. Could be Demoli, if his staff can throws fireballs, but I stick with my assumptions about him and the girl.

I find it most likely that they’re a Villain group, but since Kat’s group is a Villain group, too, it would make sense for Hero groups to attack them, too. They might turn out to be a Hero group who went into Villain grounds to take down as many Villain groups as possible. But I think it’s more likely it’s a Villain group who wants to challenge Bandit, judging from the dialogue they had so far.

This island is full of Villains. A Hero Group wouldn’t be able to just walk around challenging newbies without running into someone far more dangerous first.

Point taken.

I disagree. The disadvantages and requirements of special knowledge for Erbana have to be counter-balanced in some way and having OP powers but it looking boring (compared to demoli/morto and with the exception of it being so rare that it would gain viewer interest) .

I don’t think losing is the lesson Kat needs (or is going to get) right now. Her actions here have not been “nice,” nor would her mom have approved. At this point in her character development, I expect that she’ll completely trash the other group, though without killing anyone, and that will lead to a) people praising her for finding a way to act like a villain using Erbana and b) observers will note that she’s clearly not a new player, and people will start speculating on her identity. Good for the game ratings, but very bad for Kleya. She needs to learn that playing using Erbana rules is not enough to count as being “nice,” and that success in the Game is not being a hero, especially when people are dying in the real world for lack of skills she has.

“especially when people are dying in the real world for lack of skills she has”

Well, yes, but if she told them who she was, her LiFe account would be terminated – more likely by her/D than the officials, since they’d want to track her down. Remember, the world wants her dead because of the skills she has. (Although I still think there must be more to it, and that she was used as a fall guy by someone, when things went south.)

Hmm…

I really have to disagree here. I want Kat to succeed hard, for several reasons.
One, in order to succeed in a 5 v 1, Kat will have to pull out some major stops and show just what the Erbana class can do when pushed to combat.
Two, if she does kick a** on a 5 v 1, it’ll set up a far more difficult fight later down the road for her to fail at, because people will actually know what to expect, instead of blindfighting like this group appears to be.

I kind of do want to see Kat fail, but most of me wants to see her do something completely outrageous that only someone with incredible game knowledge could do. I’m thinking something like taking control of the forest of NPC’s and using them to restrain the other team. That, or make some kind of pact with the tree turner NPC. I’m hoping that Kat will be the cruelest nice person ever. As long as I get that, I hardly care what else happens.

Ah, so it *was* a direct whisper to her.

And now she has responded to her, this’ll be interesting.

Wonder if her turning away is so that she can get out of the alignment change range so that the others can go to town.

I don’t think so. If she wanted to let the others go to town, she wouldn’t have restrained Bandit in the first place.

Well…except that he was going to cast Knight Sacrifice within the Erbana alignment range.

After all, she’s not stopping Jane from running around killing trees.

Well, she doesn’t know what Jane is doing. Or at least, that’s what the watchers are supposed to believe.

She’s facing the other group, placing herself between them and her own group. Being a hero.

UUUGH I LOVE PANEL 2!!
I seriously cannot wait for some whoop-a$$, courtesy of Kat!! hahaha

Also finally get to see the new group! So exciting! 😀

I know Kats trying not to be a villain, but this setup REALLY makes me wonder how a villainous Erbana would play.

Erbana is not a villain Alignment.

We know.
That is why Mr. random wonders how a villainous Erbana would play.
(i.e. a player who usually sticks to destructive tactics like Kat. She already stated that she prefers the demoli class. (And hates Erbana, she plays Erbana solely for her image). So let’s see how this type of player handles this situation.)

Villainous Erbana? Oh, that’s easy.

“Oh g-d please kill me I’m so sorry”
“You’ll never know the release of death.”

Yes please, just not Kat. Maybe a past player or a morto-type that manages about a 40% Erbana?

I’m picturing something like Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho, specifically when he fought the elder Toguro and trapped him in the nightmare tree.

Ah, good to know I’m not the only one with flashbacks to YYH… =D

Don’t worry dude! You have a +luck card. Just run in circles and trust your luck. It worked last time didn’t it?

I’m predicting dude’s luck will convoke jane 😉

Is it just me, or does The Dude’s pose in the last panel look familiar? Well, beside him being (acting like?) a complete coward…?

Next page Kat will ask other team “why can’t we all just get along?”

Movie version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPMmC0UAnj0

Um, “everything just got a lot easier”?

Didn’t she say something like “there is *nothing* to fear” this morning? I liked that version better, because if she’s a condescending Demoli like Bandit it would be more in-character.

By “this morning” I meant the German time-zone. From my point of view, updates go up at around 8 a.m. for non-channel members.

Yep, I did a last minute dialogue change 🙂

Ah, it’s good to be a channel member. ^^

What was the reason behind it? Was it because she shouldn’t “fear” Bandit?

The answer should be obvious in a few more pages 😀

Alright, I’m looking forward to it. 🙂

By the way, is it the first time we see a whisper from Kat?

I’m already picturing the watchers being like: “Uh I didn’t knew Herbana could do that, I thought it was a super lame class…”

I’m guessing very soon this groupe is going to be defeated and people will go: “OMG She can do WHAT? But everyone know Herbana are weak!! HOW?! What the h***!”

And then Kat’s popularity skyrocket.

I think it might be a case of, “You’d be surprised what you can live through.”

Erbana, not Herbana.

And would you believe that if you hadn’t typoed it, I never would’ve noticed. I don’t pronounce unfamiliar words in my head the English way, even when I read text that is in English.

Same here.

In the second panel, it appears that Kat is walking away from the group. So she’s just leaving Danni and the Dude to fight it out with these guys? That doesn’t seem at all right. She must be getting something from the forest to somehow fight these guys.
They don’t seem to understand their situation yet.

Also, I keep expecting that Bloody Mary should be showing up sometime. She won’t be nice at all.

Bandit was facing the enemy Group (he intended to blow them up, after all) and fell on his back. His legs should be pointing toward the enemy Group. Now, what direction is Kat walking in, again?

But didn’t Bandit try to turn when he realized Kat was “attacking” him? I still think Kat is placing herself between the two groups to protect hers, to be a hero.

Not as far as I can see.

Uh, I meant that about turning around.

“So dead” is so exactly the opposite of what’s about to happen.

Agreed. So dead is definitely the opposite of everything that will happen there, including the enemy team. (I hope?)

FOOL! What you are your pitiful group fail to realize is that we have MAIN CHARACTER POWERS! We simply CANNOT be defeated, not matter how hopeless things look!

LOL, with their hacking skills, they pretty much could set up Plot Armour (warning, TV Tropes). Or maybe Erbana has a way of making Personal Lightweight Omnidirectional Tactical Armour for them… 😛

D*** PvPers…

LOL, this was exactly what I was thinking when these new players showed up. “I’d really love for the Game to be real… except the PvP aspect…”

There’s no escaping the PvPers. They’re everywhere. Even in the games where players aren’t supposed to PvP. I’ve seen them.

To be fair, Erbana doesnt seem like a team friendly route to begin with.

I don’t think that it’s that UNfriendly either. It just doesn’t agree with demoli nor morto. A mani is manipulating and apparently can turn people into trees (without killing). Cardista is about the cards and I’m guessing trickery. Kesti does quests, as long as you don’t accept any killing quests…

It’s just directly opposite from Morto and not especially Demoli friendly either as they’d have to tone down their booms so that the social situations that it’s incapable of solving is close to 0. Which is a problem with 2 Morto and a Demoli

I just imagined a Kesti running around collecting herbs for an Erbana.

I’m just sitting here, grinning, because I remembered something that most others probably forgot…..danni was given a quest by the dude. And she STILL hasn’t completed it yet. Who else remembers that besides me? Also the quest was to go and find a card for the dude and bring it to him. >X3

Are you expecting her to steal the enemy Cardista’s card, and give it to him?

Well it only happened like a minute ago. The Game has to be built to have a sensible timeline to quests… like 2 days or 2 weeks or something like that.

Yeah, I’m kinda worried about it, too.
But maybe “too long” means “days”, not “minutes”?

Just think about it for a sec. After the team (or just kat) finished off the opponents, danni may suddenly remember that she has a quest. That is unless Jane stops by and causes danni to freak out and orget about the quest for a longer while. Just think about that for a bit x3

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 449