Bonus Experience skills are a bit underpowered

Both the Big game hunter and Vegan trees have passive experience gain bonuses for killing their respective animal/vegetable. Each give 8 experience.

But when you look at the game as a whole that 8 experience isn't all that much. You might kill hundreds of critters of a given type after a couple of floors but in comparison the experience reward is a bit underwhelming.

Look at the lockpicks gained from burglarly. You can get 12-45 experience per door. That adds up quickly. Not to mention the extra experience you get from being able to disable higher traps.

Same is true with archeaology. Sending artifacts to the museum is VERY experience worthy. I have gotten 1800 experience from a single item. That is many floors worth of critters for that single item (a neckpiece)... when you note that you get multiple artifacts per floor, the bonus experience is a bit low. Especially as the experience value of items typically increases the deeper you delve into the dungeon.

I suggest that the experience gained be changed from a flat 8 to something like 8 Experience + Current Floor Level. The experience would slowly scale as you got deeper and help round out the skills.

 

There are side effects besides the XP for the BGH skill, unsure about the vegan skill.

That said, I agree that it should be buffed, maybe it should be lvl of creature as a bonus.

As for Museum, I think it should be the lvl 3 archaeology skill

 

What are the side effects that you gain for that level of a point? The vegan tree comes with additional stats but also comes with additional penalties, so I see that as cancelling each other out.

 

I think its fine as it is, but I mean its low later so like 20% of their normal amount wouldn't be bad either. That way low mobs aren't abused and high mobs feel more valuable

 

Just stop for a second and ask yourself how many animals you kill vs. how many doors you lockpick. If you don't have Burglary, it's probably about the same.

 

Well I am currently playing around on level 6, and each door picked is giving me 48 experience, and while I didn't take into account that many were unlocked, I forgot to account for chests which are also giving 48 experience each. This level there hasn't been too many animals, mostly vegetables and golems.

In any event the skills are specifically meant to be experience boosters and while you could roam around on the first floor and mow down tons of mobs (since there seem to be more animals on level 1 than any other level), but isn't so hot later on.

 

The stat boosts for Vegan Warrior are awesome and there is nothing stopping you from killing animals anyway with ranged weapons and magic so you can get all the experience anyway plus bonus experience.

 

I've gotten 4500 experience from a single item. Archaeology is extremely overpowered besides just the now horribly nerfed "This translation is all wrong." Or as I like to call it, "Let's get horribly lost in my own museum on the first roll ever."

I haven't tried Big Game Hunter, and since I like killing everything that I can handle, I won't play a Vegan. But +8 experience, yeah, that's pretty small.

 

The capstone skill in BGH gives you a chance of doubling your XP bonus, while all the Vegan skills give you great passive buffs in addition to whatever else they do. Also, keep in mind that monsters respawn, while doors do not, and most floors have monster zoos on them, which contain many animals (really, I think balancing Veganism was going to be a guessing game without giving it an XP boosting skill, so I'll reserve judgement on that one as a whole until I actually play with it.) I think things are pretty fair.

The real question is, what do the Archaeology and Burglary skill sets do in comparison?

Yes, Archaeology gives you a nice hat. And you can double your chances of being cursed by Krong. And you get some trap skills. And there's the whole re-enchanting an item boondoggle. But it doesn't give you free food. It doesn't give you piercing damage. And you can't summon four pets at once when you really, really need meat shields. And shipping artifacts to a museum requires that you pay extra beyond the skill taken- namely, the artifact you loose.

Burglary lets you save some of the money you loose to Archaeology, and there's the whole lockpicks thing, which lets you open more chests than you might otherwise. Some people like the immobilization skill, I've never used it much. But otherwise, Burglary just lets you better manage a resource that is pretty much meaningless after DL 5-6, namely your money. Again, no food, damage or pets.

It's important to evaluate both the individual parts of a skill tree and the entirety. Yes, the XP boosting part of BGH/Vegan Warrior isn't very impressive compared to Archaeology or Burglary. But buffing it would OP the skills as a whole, unless something else were sacrificed (again, those crazy Vegans are a little harder to be sure about here.) I think they can leave them be.

 

(Left out the entire key point of Burglary: Ninja Vanish+Move in Mysterious Ways)

 

My only complaint about it is that it's near the end of the tree, which means to get any use out of it you pretty much have to rush for it, or else the XP cost of obtaining it is way too high. On the other hand, putting a point into it means you're only one point away from the final skill, which gives a ton of stat bonuses as well as making the XP proc occur more often. It's not so bad that you have to rush it though; the tree is definitely one with strong early game power.

Perhaps its main weakness is that there aren't a lot of animals in DL2 and 3.

 

The XP bonus is a tad underwhelming, I can agree with that for sure. Especially compared to archeology (which is imo overpowered right now). As others have pointed out though, it's not the only beneficial effect of the BGH/Vegan skill trees, so it probably doesn't have to be on par with "It Belongs in a Museum!" in terms of XP gain. With that being said, adding a little bit more than +8 xp shouldn't make either tree overpowered.
Especially BGH seems to lack in passive buffs compared to vegan, but then again it doesn't have the debuffs either... I haven't played with vegan yet though so I'm really not sure about that tree, but I have played around with BGH and at least for that tree I agree with the OP.

I think we'll be seeing some balance tweaks in the coming weeks anyway, now that the majority of critical bugs have been fixed, so we'll just have to wait and see ^^

 

In my opinion the vegan debuffs are worth it for the lovely stat bonuses, and if you do need to hack and slash your way through a room of monsters you can do so without any fear (they still remain passive even when you attack them) and just drink a potion of purity or uncurse yourself some other way afterwards, such as the final skill in the tree. BGH, on the other hand, is very light on the stat bonuses and what it does give doesn't even match up to the other stuff acquired from Veganism with the exception of the diggle summon. It seems like it could do with some light stat bonuses for each skill level as well to make it on par with Veganism, or most other skills in general.

 

I actually agree with that - the only reason for me to take Big Game Hunter is for additional meat if I'm unsure about the survivability of my build and have no other skills to take (and still, that isn't very useful considering the fact that various types of meat take place, and ground down it's almost useless in combat) whilst trying to get anything that would not be a wizard skill, rarely even spending one point for lure (depending on the exact build).
If it did scale with anything, or if it actually gave us some passive bonuses (I see this tree as one that should give us a little critical, for example), then it would be slightly less underwhelming, but as it is now getting to the end of this tree is practically pointless.

 

To be fair, I've never found a use for Move in Myserious ways. Seems that all it does is allow me to teleport to the other side of a door I haven't entered yet.

Ninja vanish I've used once in a great while to get me out of enemies. But the fact it wears off immediately upon attacking makes it likes to be your downfall if you run into someone by accident. Worst Invisibility ever. Worse ninja ever, really...attacking someone and they know you're there. Bad Ninja indeed.
Honestly, one attack grace period sounds fair.

The trap bonus is nice. Archaelogy + Burglery + Tinkering + Perception = Trap lore of 13 before you max all the trees, and a trap sight radius so high I'm surprised I can't see traps on the floor below me.

 

It can be used tactically if you are playing a mostly-rogue character, as it has a higher range than knightly leap, and (although I'm sure it's a bug) you can use it to teleport into doors, thus knowing what is inside while being able to escape with ease.

That's the whole point - Burglary is about avoiding obstacles, and that means getting rid of traps (trap detection), getting rid of locks (lucky pick skill) and avoiding being hit (for which invisibility is great, especially if you use it to eat something and retreat, and move in mysterious ways is also great). Heck, after all the time I spent playing as a rogue, I have to say that it actually feels like five-finger discount and that tree's starting skill (whatever it's called) are merely random bonuses.
And obviously, attacking an opponent directly does clash with "avoidance".

 

Move in Mysterious ways is seriously one of the most awesome teleports in the game.** I use it constantly. You can teleport to any square you can see. I use it to get better position or away from baddies. So that I can cast spells at ease or away from a newly opened zoo door, or behind traps, or just so I have more turns to lob bolts at my target. So good.

** The only possible exception is invisible geometries... where it has a minor penalty of being only in straight lines, but a major bonus of having a 3 second cooldown. Rumor has it that this ability isn't working as it should from the spellDB, but considering how good it is, nobody is asking for it to get nerfed.

 

The only exception? Ever used Mathemagic?

 

Yes, but Euclids translation costs mana! Alright. Late game the cost isn't bad you rarely need to cast 2 right in a row, and with a 20 second cooldown move in mysterious ways is always suited me quite well.

 

But I've never been able to use Moves in Mysterious ways to teleport to any square in range. It only works when I click on a door frame. Never have I been able to use it for anything but to move to the other side of a shut door.
Mind you, I haven't tried it in months.

Also, while the point of the tree is to avoid being detected, you shouldn't be punished for an accident. That's just mean spirited.