Essential DoD Skills I and II Finally Game-Ready!

It's been a long time in the making, and I'm not guaranteeing that these are both 100% crash free -- but they are balanced, fun, and complete.

<long-ago edits trimmed to stay under 1000 character limit>

Last Time Until The Next Time: Ninjitsu's Fadeout skill wasn't doing anything because apparently you can't call a triggerondodge command from a spell, only from a skill. So there is no more 'Fadeout' spell, and Ninjas of level 3 or higher automatically become invisible for 2 turns whenever they dodge. This invisibility now also triggers a short burst of forgetme mist in a wide radius around the player, pacifying the enemies so that they don't attack through the invisibility. Also, Ninjato are now badass enough to reflect their cost and Artifact quality.

Furthermore, someone pointed out that Ninjitsu's Secret Sword and Poisoneer's Venomous Darts were kind of overlapping, so now Poisoneer's third level grants a 100% chance to poison enemies with any weapon you happen to throw -- but doesn't summon any weapons itself.

Next Time!: Turns out Supercharged (Warlockery 7) was broken, and Mana Crush wasn't dealing it's intended level of damage. Both effects have been corrected. EDoDSI is unchanged; EDoDSII is new and everyone interested in Warlockery should re-download it.

Also, Ninpo was crashing some people's games, so it has been replaced with a thrownbuff that adds an assortment of random effects to thrown weapons. Currently just 3 effects occur, but over the next week or so I'll add lots more for fun Ninja chaos.


And Again!: digglemaggot was kind enough to provide badass new sprites for Mana Crush. Also, Ninpo's dozen effects (4 common, 4 uncommon, and 4 rare) are done! EDoDSI is still the same, ED0DSII has been re-uploaded with all new Ninpo and new Mana Crush graphics.

OK, So: QiGong was determined to be nigh unto useless as a ranged attack skill in the later dungeon. Testing revealed that even with +2 magic power per level, the mana-nuking qualities of the skill made magery hard enough to accomplish that the magic power wasn't terribly overpowered, so QiGong now has +2 magic power per level. Qi Blast's (and More Qi Blast's) damage scaling has also improved slightly.

Furthermore, Dredmorpedia and J-Factor helped me catch a minor problem -- Poisoned Darts weren't triggering the DoT form of Poison, just the single-hit version, making them much less powerful than they were supposed to be.

Allright, with the help of RaustBlackDragon, we've toned down Bushido a little bit to make it no longer an absolute must-have (but still really good) for Warrior-only archetypes. The first level's crit bonus is gone; Jaws of Death now only provides 1 point of resistance per proc but lasts twice as long and stacks twice as high (the end result is a pile of resistance that builds more slowly and is less likely to remain peaked.) Finally, Mind like Meatloaf now gives huge penalties to Dodge and Counter, cannot be removed, and is a 4-brittle buff -- so you WILL take some damage before it ends. I highly encourage everyone to re-download Essential DoD.zip, I think you'll find Bushido characters to be much more Roguelike(TM) now.

OK, I think this will be the final edit. Jaws of Death was discovered to be too powerful for warriors willing and able to walk right into a zoo and tank hits for a few turns. As such, it's max stacksize has been lowered to 6 so that the deeper-level special damage monsters will still be able to power a few points of damage through past it. (Seriously, when Dredmor is dealing 0 damage with his melee attacks, that's a bit off. )

SO, clearly I was wrong. I managed to never notice that Kiaido was dealing double damage compared to a normal attack. It no longer does so.

FUNCTIONAL ISSUES:
1) Without manTemplateDB being editable, the Warlock skill "Massive Attack" doesn't currently do anything, and the QiGong skill "Spirit Bomb" is very weak. You can fix that by opening up the TemplateDB in Essential DoD I and Essential DoD II and copying Template 600 (from DoD I) and 601 (from DoDII) into your game's natural TemplateDB file.


Here's the contents:

Essential DoD:
Bushido, a Warrior class skill that gives meleers the survivability they need to make it in DLs 7+.
Notable Skill: Kiaido, the first skill in the line, deals extra damage to a foe, alerts all monsters within a 3-ish square radius to your presence, and slaps those creatures with a huge penalty to Crit Chance for a couple of rounds. (This should help alleviate the CounterCrit-Crit instagibbing problem in lower levels.)
Fun To Do: Walk around nearly blind and utterly unaware of enemy attacks as your body puts itself back together.

QiGong, a Warrior class skill that grants mystical combat abilities by sacrificing mana and mana regen.
Notable Skill: Cleanse Meridians allows you to remove negative status effects on yourself as well as coming with a small host of minor stat boosts.
Fun To Do: Spend 28.57% of your Warrior's turns throwing AoE nukes at distant foes.

Poisoneer, a Rogue class skill that encourages kiting, cunning, and all around avoiding toe-to-toe combat.
Notable Skill: You Know That You're Toxic sprays deadly poison all around you from time to time when you get hit in combat.
Fun To Do: Stun and poison an enemy at the same time and then eat some cheese right in front of them while they die a horrible death, unable to do jack about it.


Essential DoD II:
Ninjitsu, a Rogue class skill that gives spells that cost mana but provide many Rogue-y benefits.
Notable Skill: Genjutsu creates a weak clone of yourself and a puff of confusing smoke as well as teleporting you a random distance away. Great for getting out of a sticky situation.
Fun To Do: Obtain a Ninjato. (Good luck with that!)

Silver Tongue: a Rogue class skill that gives you the power of persuasion -- sometimes you can even persuade yourself.
Notable Skill: Pimp My Hide gives your melee attacks a decent chance to turn (a part of) your enemies into gold, but also gives THEIR melee attacks a small chance to turn (a part of) YOU into gold.
Fun To Do: Figure out just what you can make when you're faking it.

Warlockery, a Wizard class skill that is for Wizards who really wanted to be Warriors, but were too busy, you know, reading.
Notable Skill: Mana Crush, the capstone skill, causes a horrendous (and somewhat unpredictable) rain of mana-based explosions all around you, draining away all of your mana, wrenching you out of your super-powered Warlock state (which you must be in to use Mana Crush in the first place), basically killing anything nearby, and leaving some crystallized mana sitting around on the floor in it's wake.
Fun To Do: Figure out how to regenerate more than one mana per turn so that you can stay in your Empowered state forever!


To use these mods, copy the zip files as-is into your...
Windows: Documents and Settings/Administrator/My Documents/Gaslamp Games/Dungeons of Dredmor/mods
Linux: "$HOME/.local/share/Dredmor"
OSX: Library/Application Support/Dungeons of Dredmor
...directories and then hit the [MODS] button when opening the game and select your mod(s) of choice.

If you find any bugs, balance issues, or just have some comments, please post them here or PM me!

***********************************
Changelog:
1.0.0 -- Updated to actual game-readiness, made balance changes to Kiaido (Bushido 1) and Your Basic Poison (Poisoneer 1).

1.0.1 -- EDoDSII updated to fix brokenness and uselessness beyond brokenness involving Fadeout. Ninja now have yet another killer tool for escaping melee. Poisoneer's third level was changed to a thrownbuff rather than summoning thrown weapons.

1.0.2 -- EDoDSII updated several things about Ninjitsu and has fixed bugs and new graphics for Warlockery!

1.0.3 -- EDoDSI updated to fix a few overpowered issues with Bushido and a few underpowered ones with QiGong.
***********************************

Enjoy!

 

There seems to be an issue with actually getting the statbonus increases from skills:

Example 1 - The stat bonus increases seen here corrospond ( i think ) to the increase of warrior skills the bonusses associated with the skill itself seem not to work, nor do the negatives
Example 2 - Same as above, a 5 life increase should be seen, instead only 4 hp goes up, but a warrior skill increase also raises life.

It seems the Open Meridians skill doesn't target the player characters but is able to target monsters. And is it supposed to be free ?

Ebon Flow from the warlock tree adds two identical spells. Passive damage increases also don't seem to work.Pretty much anything that passive seems to not work. Probably just a bug with the game itself i guess.

Edit:

After some reading around on the forum this does indeed seem to be a known problem. So uhm, may want to mention that in your post ?

 

Holy crap, I might be able to make a pure rogue build that doesn't suck dick beyond the first floor!? Testing this right. now.

 

what manTemplateDB is not editable? Can you elaborate on that? Null's wind mod has one of those files, are you sure it can't be edited?

 

Mine doesn't actually use it, I just never had removed it. It doesn't work though.

 

Woo! I really enjoyed your first set, looking forward to trying these! Initial impressions, Ninjitsu is fantastic. Helps give rogue types much needed offensive skills and dodgery. I really like the Genjutsu. It might be my favorite overall. I haven't tried the Warlockery yet, but Im not quite sure what sort of archetype it goes with? Battle-Mages perhaps? Very nice though!

 

When trying to use Warlockery, it keeps either coming up as a blank or as the Bushido skill instead.

Edit: Actually, nothing in the second mod works for me at all, despite several attempts at deleting and replacing it.

 

Warlockery is quite overpowered it seems to me, but I haven't gotten that good of a try with it. Also you have Ebon Flow three times like I said but I neglected to mention that for first levels it doesn't matter whether it's first or last, and additionally they get put in twice if you have the skill twice. Sorry about the confusion.

 

It's fixed in 1.0.9, which should be autoupdated by Steam "any minute now".

Also, Cleanse Meridians references "Curse Removal", a spell from the main game's SpellDB.xml that is in fact a "type=Target" spell, meaning you can target yourself (or anything else) with it, and it will remove all negative debuffs from that target. And yes, it is supposed to be free.

Odd. Are you combining it with any other mods, or using it on it's own? What's your OS, and what version of the game are you using?

Right, I forgot to mention the double-appearance of Ebon Flow in the 'known issues'. I'll fix that.

Also, I'm interested in your thoughts that Warlockery might be overpowered. At which level, and why? I know the first three levels are bordering on underpowered to me -- but I honestly haven't done a lot of playtesting for balance on levels 5-8 of Warlockery, mostly just technical testing to make sure that they work as intended.


Also, for anyone who has played/is playing with Poisoneer, I had an idea and wanted to ask y'all: would it be better to turn the first-level skill from a proc to an activated ability with, say, a 15-turn cooldown? That would give you less poison overall (and no reason to use it with Polymorphed forms), but it would let you choose when to apply it so you could maximize the tactical advantage. Thoughts? Thanks!

 

I just feel that it boosts everything, and can help every single last thing at everything in a large way. Of course I haven't done a whole lot with it, but it's basically making a warrior into a wizard and a warrior, while making a rogue additionally a warrior and a wizard, and making a wizard also a warrior at the same time, just for having this skill.

Also to fix first level just splice the polymorph skill into another level because it'll always be there if you have the polymorph anyway.

And you need to have log die after a turn or two.

 

That's absolutely true -- but it does so at a huge cost in mana upkeep; you can't keep it up for very long, and you can't do any other significant wizarding while you do it. Seems to me like that ought to balance it out nicely. If you want Ebon Flow and Eldritch Smite up, that's 2 mana every 3 turns; add Empowerment to that and it jumps to 5 mana every 3 turns. Massive Attack eats up mana in a big way; Supercharged regains 1 point of mana per turn above what it and Empowerment consume, so it's the only way that the Warlock can do anything other than it's own shtick. Mana Crush uses up all of your mana (and gives you a few points back, but nothing really significant.)

Basically, it's kind of like Werediggle Form only it eats mana like a vacuum, is slightly stronger in combat, and doesn't come with any of the nifty tricks like providing your own food or digging through walls.

OK, I'll start the log with a curse that nukes the hell out of it 3 turns later, and give it something absurd like 500 HP so it will definitely survive those 3 turns.

 

I've attempted it both with other mods, and entirely without other mods. When you use it with another mod, the skill you choose is replaced with a skill from some other mod, seemingly at random, when used alone, the skill is simply blank.

Other mods, including the first in your series work fine for me.

OS: Windows 7

Version: The most recent version as far as I can tell, downloaded it from the humble bundle link day before yesterday.

 

When you open your splash screen, what does it say in the bottom left? It should say 1.0.9

 

1.0.7

Seems like the humble bundle hasn't updated it's download yet. :\ (just redownloaded it and it's still 1.0.7 from there instead of .9).

 

Yeah, 1.0.7's mod support has some issues. If I were you, I'd just wait patiently for HiB to update and then try again once it's up to spec.

 

Not entirely sure why, but when I loaded up this mod along side wind mage, gust was replaced with dwarven speech.

I'm running 1.0.8 if that helps any

 

hey, new to the community, might do some modding later, but right now I'm having a problem with your mod; it seems to crash the game when I select the Warlock skill from pack II (got a steam achievement for it though). Particularly, I'm also using these skill trees: Ley Walker, Magic Training, and Blood Mage.

Running 1.0.9 on Windows XP btw.

 

Welp, now I've got 1.0.9, and Essential DoD II still doesn't work, but instead of previous problems it crashes when trying to create a character with warlockery. Creating a character with anything else works just fine. T_T


Edit: Aha! This works with the expansion, but crashes on the non expansion version of the game.

 

wierd. I thought that 1.09 included full support for the XML from the expansion.

Maybe there's some graphical elements that aren't in the base game that I used. I'll note that in the OP .

 

You could just copy them into your mod