Dark Deception: Monsters & Mortals – How To: Egg (Penny Guide)

How to be successful with Penny in Dark Deception: Monsters and Mortals.

Context

All credit goes to Ketchup !

Penny proved herself to be not as threatening as Lucky or Hangry in Mascot Mayhem, but she did prove to be quite annoying, as she could stun with eggs and float around the map in order to hide her footsteps during a chase, as well as effectively being always near Doug. Her floating ability was canceled in Zone 3 thanks to there being a ceiling, but her eggs still allowed Hangry and Lucky to catch up and secure the kill if the player wasn’t fast enough. However, this isn’t base Dark Deception, so how good is she? Let’s not scramble the details, and lets find out!

Background Info

Much like Nurse, Penny at the moment has a singular class all to herself. That class, is the Ranged class. This means she operates similarly to the Mortal, Cybil Bennette, where she is faster than Balanced classes, but slower than Supports. She also has insane range, although unlike Cybil, Penny’s range is ridiculously large, allowing her to snipe from well across the map if she so desired. These come in the form of eggs, which act as projectiles that fly in the direction thrown until they hit a wall or strike another character. They also break when opposing eggs are hit. These eggs do 25 damage per hit, meaning Penny can rack up damage fast if she’s landing all her hits while having her range advantage. On top of this, her speed being pretty good allows her to effectively gather shards, and she becomes the fastest thing alive once her Ult has been used, making her VERY good at gathering shards in Shard Mayhem as well as defensive play in general. This is reinforced in the sense that she has 400 freaking HP, meaning she is able to live through some pretty outrageous attacks, including Ducky Surprise (with a solid amount of HP left), Hangry’s Rib Crusher combo, Bunny Barrage, and a high chance to live through Golden Demise if Gold Watcher misses at least five axes. However, this is where the good ends…

In terms of weaknesses…oh boy, she’s full of them. The first of which is that the eggs she throws travel slowly, meaning they are easy to dodge if she is too far from her target, meaning she has to be a reasonable distance in order to lessen the reaction time to dodge. This means it is very difficult to kill if she’s not hitting all her eggs, which is easy to accomplish when facing her. She also requires proper aiming and prediction to land her eggs. The eggs doing so little damage even by Monster standards means she needs item, trap, and boss support the most out of all the Monsters at the moment. As a result, Primal Fear and Frenzy Mode items can help her out in this regard. Her light attack is easily the worst in the game on the Monster side, as it only does 10 damage and it is delayed, meaning it is very impractical to use in most circumstances. Furthermore, the eggs are unable to break bananas, Air Screamers, and clones, meaning Penny is forced to waste more time to break them by using her light attack. Finally, thanks to her reliance on eggs and range, Penny is completely helpless is she loses her range advantage, as her light hit’s too slow and her eggs are easy to dodge, meaning her health can whittle down quickly in this state.

Ultimate: Power of Love

Fun fact: The image on the Ult is reminiscent of one of her poses in her music video “Always Near.” I’m sure most of you know that, but if you don’t give it a watch, the raps in general are very good, especially Hangry’s.

Penny’s Ult is referred to “Power of Love.” When activated, Penny becomes so fast to the point where she outruns Reaper Nurse with Vaccination Time up. On top of this, she gains an increase in damage to her eggs, the eggs doing 30 damage now instead of 25. Furthermore, the eggs travel faster and are slightly larger, making it slightly easier to land her attacks. Finally, the eggs travel EVEN FARTHER, approximately by 1.5x (or 150%), meaning she can snipe even farther than ever before. All lasting for 15 seconds.

This sounds like a lot, and it is. In terms of how useful it is…uh…it’s easier to chuck eggs, I guess. I mean, the egss are still easy to dodge and the damage increase isn’t THAT significant. Yes, it helps, but it isn’t substantial enough to make much of a difference. The main purpose of this Ult is as a tool to let Penny zoom around the map far quicker, and it absolutely helps her out in the shard collecting department in Shard Mayhem. However, despite the ability to fly off the ground slightly now, she is still banana prone. Overall, this Ult is the worst one on the Monster side, as it barely helps her besides letting her “I am speed” her way through the map.

Maze Escape

Man, if you thought Nurse was bad in Maze Escape thanks to a lot of Mortals able to counter Fear Cuts Deep and her hitbox problems, she’ll look like a top tier after we’re done discussing Penny’s performance in the mode. You can probably see where this is going just off that sentence alone.

Thanks to the mode focusing on hunting Mortals and putting on offensive pressure to them, Penny is disastrously bad in Maze Escape because she has no offensive presence whatsoever. Her low damage output even with Power of Love and Frenzy Mode active makes her a non-trivial threat if you can avoid taking damage and dodge the eggs. Her susceptibility to bananas also significantly harms her more than other Monsters since being forced to use her light hit to break them means Mortals can have all the time in the world to avoid her. Furthermore, she is completely invalidated by most Mortals in the mode since her Ult does absolutely nothing offensively. Hell, she evens struggles with killing PenPen sometimes thanks to her speed and Penny’s lack of strength. Penny is a defensive Monster, which she is absurdly strong in this regard. However, this is not the mode for that role, so Penny is easily the worst Monster here. I’m sorry, but I cannot give any reasonable advice here besides save your Frenzy Mode items and hope the Mortals screw up and make themselves easier to kill. If she gets buffed in a meaningful way in the future, this will be rewritten.

In terms of maps, the best chance she has at being useful is on Elementary Evil. The map is narrow, so landing eggs aren’t too bad. On top of this, the fake portals are very good at crippling Mortals, allowing her to perform her job a lot better. The ABC letters are the icing on the cake, since the eggs can go through them and hit targets while being attacked. Monstrum Madness is also a strong map since Penny can have vantage points and snipe from above, as well as steam and Super Brute support. Stranger Sewers and Silent Sacrifice are open maps, but her speed at least allows her to catch up to Mortals easier. Deadly Decadence isn’t a good map since there’s a lot of places to turn and dodge her eggs. DON’T EVEN BOTHER WITH MONKEY BUSINESS!!!

PvP Matchups:

• Performs Well Against: Doug, Nikson, PenPen
• Performs Decently Against: Evans, Cybil, SuperHorrorBro
• Performs Poorly Against: Bierce, Vince, Borisov, 8-BitRyan, Dawko, Heather

Nothing else needs to be said. Penny’s offensive pressure is so bad to the point where pretty much every single Mortal is able to put up with her. A damage buff and faster eggs are very much needed for her to perform well here.

Shard Mayhem

Compared to her disastrous Maze Escape description, Penny is far more useful in Shard Mayhem. Now, she still isn’t COMPLETELY good by any means, as her offensive ability is still very poor, but she is able to be a very good shard collector if you choose to play passively. This is due to her general speed being good for the mode, as well as Power of Love making her insanely fast. On top of this, the mode is a free for all, so other players will be fighting each other. What this means is that she can track down weakened opponents and potentially finish them off a lot easier than she can normally. This makes her good at stealing kills from other players, as well as general shard collecting. Speaking of collecting shards, she is even stronger than Agatha and Reaper Nurse in this regard thanks to having an absurd amount of health to back her speed up, making her a pain to kill. However, she is overall worse than those two because Agatha and especially Reaper Nurse are actually able to fight others if they really want to, whereas Penny can only fight things that are weakened first. Long story short, if Penny gets shard leader, she MUST maintain it, otherwise it’ll be very difficult for her to get it back due to her lack of offensive ability.

Maps remain the same. Phantom Malak poses a problem to Penny unless she has Power of Love active.

PvP Matchups:

• Performs Well Against: Gold Watcher, Malak, Hangry, Brute
• Performs Decently Against: Murder Monkey, Dread Ducky, Clown Gremlin, Lucky, Robbie
• Performs Poorly Against: Agatha, Fiend, Reaper Nurse, Nurse, Penny (herself)

Penny performs well against the Power class primarily because of being able to severely outrange them and outspeed them, allowing her to whittle them down quickly. However, many of her other matchups become even since they have faster movement speeds, allowing them to dodge the eggs easier. The Speed classes and Supports outrun her, allowing them to remove her range advantage and cripple Penny fast. The Penny ditto is hell, trust me.

Closing

Penny was a nice idea on paper, and certainly an interesting addition to the Monster side, being the first ever Ranged class on the Monster team. However, in execution, Penny just has so many downsides to the point where even if you do obtain the power of aimbot within your soul, she still struggles thanks to primarily her pathetic damage output and how easy the eggs are to avoid. This makes her by far the worst Monster in the game right now, and certainly in Maze Escape. In Shard Mayhem, she’s more viable if you play passively thanks to her immense speed under Power of Love, but that’s all she can really do.

If you think about it logically, it makes sense why Penny’s this bad out of the gate. We did just have a Mortal rule the game for around half the game’s lifespan because of ridiculous range and good damage as well. Glowstick Entertainment probably didn’t want that to happen again for the Monsters side, so they decided to play it safe when designing Penny. Cheers to potential Penny buffs in the future, because dear god, this guide was really hard to make since she’s not only hard to play, but not very effective either.