Life Force
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Can anybody give a rough figure for how long a team got when the life force was at maximum and the life force ran out (or would have ran out)?
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Yeah, I think that the answer will probably depend on how many rooms teams had to go through to get to a clue room or some food casually lying there for a dungeoneer to get. Some teams were punished for misadventure with an extra room (usually a bomb room in the early series or the blade corridor in later series) so they would probably get longer to get the food should they survive.
I remember reading in the first Knightmare book from 1988 that as a rough guide the lifeforce tended to go down one grade as a dungeoneer went into a different room (even if they wasted time and Treguard warned them that they were wasting lifeforce). Not sure how accurate this rule is though. If totally accurate the rule would be that most lifeforces would last for 3 or 4 rooms.
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There was no set time to it, I think they kept it for cliffhangers and whenever there was food lying around [and to add some extra tension to the story]
I noticed some teams needed new food a lot, eg in series 3, the 'longer journey' caused them more damage for team 1, but other teams didnt seem to suffer as badly.
Would have been nice to see a SET time limit, if they haven't had a near death encounter.
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A set time limit would have taken the edge off completely. The life force-ometer was used mainly, I reckon, as a tool to tell the team to get their dungeoneer out of the room and stop wasting time. This would usually be the first warning, the second would be an impatient Treguard comment or, if they hang around long enough, Mr Grimwold or his series equivalent following them very slowly and clumsily.
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There were times when it just stopped completely. I noticed recently on one of the Challenge? reruns a team who told their dungeoneer to put the food in the knapsack once they'd got to the Level Clue Room table. The life force icon came on screen, then disappeared. It was only once Golgarach had finished with the riddles that the dungeoneer put the food in the knapsack, and the life force was at exactly the same point it had been a minute or two before.
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Well, the Life Force Clock was not done in real time - particularly in series 1 and 2 when it ran full speed. Even in series 3, 4 and 5 when it ran at half speed it would have only lasted about three minutes. It only degrades when visible - like in series 1 team 4 in the level 2 clue room, when it was running out, Treguard said "come on team - your Life Force Clock is moving".
For the new series, I'd have a real-time clock that ran very slow for condition green, faster for condition yellow and quite speedy for condition red. This would allow it to last longer (a standard seven minutes I think would be appropriate) but would not take the edge off any Life Force emergencies.
P.S.: I think it'd be good to have a new Life Force Clock in series 9 styled just like the series 1-5 one, but with the head of the dungeoneer playing instead - this would help raise tension, to see an image of the dungeoneer's OWN head decaying as opposed to an abstract face.
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The reason the life force went green and then back to red on Challenge the other day is because the dungeoneer took the food back out of the knapsack when Golgarach appeared - obviously scared! The problem here is that their life force was so low that they wouldn't have had time (at the rate it was going down) to answer the three riddles without dying!
I like the idea of the dungeoneer's face decaying! Nice...
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I'm personally inclined to think that the life force does go down at a steady rate, but it is timed such that, when they reach a clue room (or other similar situation as mentioned above), the life force will be low. I don't think this would be too difficult to do. Except if the team are trapped in a room, where the life force is mysteriously already out. I think that this is 'manufactured', because it would be boring to wait several minutes for the life force to run out.
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