Essential DoD Core Skill Rebalance v.0.1.2

sorry for the doublepost, but this is an update with some info, actually a request...

whenever I use Abyssal fire while I have a version active already, the per-attack buff doesn't reset, it just fizzles. this isnt the case of per-hit buffs like turtling. Any way to fix this? the worst part of Abyssal fire is that when the effect wears off, the fire resist wears off too, so you end up hurting yourself.

... if there was a way to recharge the buff by using it again, rather than being forced to attack something just to let the effect wear off, it would be a hell of a lot more reliable.

 

How about I just move the resistance from inside the buff to a passive stat bonus you get from taking the level? Would that be too strong?

 

Oh, yeah, that would work. You don't have to do that right away though, take some time to build up a few suggestions.

No, I don't think it would be overpowered. You pretty much have it always on, when you can afford to. it just helps you not to burn yourself alive by your own stupidity (I've done it a few times msyelf.... letting the effect wear off, and being surrounded by fire I could not resist).

Besides, there are buffs further down the tree that give even more fire resistance, so all it would change is the time between getting those buffs, you burning yourself alive all the time.


(/me gets to thinking about other things that are annoying)

any chance you can add a small amount of fire resist to the end of smithing? ^^ it would make sense flavor wise, and opens up the option of getting promethian magic on a warrior.


edit: I'm not sure crafting recipes fit within the skill and spell xml's, but it's always annoyed me you could make more arrows with tinkering than throwing weapons with smithing. it makes sense, it takes more material to make a throwing weapon than an arrow, but they both have the same durability when thrown D=.

I'm not reccomending any fixes though, I just thought I would bring this up. I read about how smithing isn't as useful as the other crafting skills... can anything be done about that in this rebalance mod?

 

I'll consider a rebalance mod that's specific to crafting if the idea gets any real support, how's that?


And yeah, I'll tack a couple of points of Fire Resist onto the end of smithing. That makes some sense, after all.

 

thanks :> that would probably be more than enough to fix that problem, making smithing enticing enough to warrant it in a build.

can't wait to test out Staves + Maces + Dual Wield + Promethian Magic + Viking Wizardry + Smithing + Perception :> I set you on fire and play keep away by smashing you with hammers and sticks!

 

I'm adding a few extra stat points to Alchemy and Wandcrafting as well along the way. Tinkering gets all that trappiness, the other crafting skills need just a couple of points of love.

 

yeah, wandcrafting is kinda meh as well to be honest. maybe magic resist? it would make sense, especially as a young wand polisher you've had to deal with a few misfires in your day. XD

edit: well, thats just a suggestion. I'm kinda excited to see what you'll decide on myself. also, to be perfectly honest, I've never leveled up wandcrafting to max level. it just didn't seem that useful me to me. well, maybe more wand affinity would make it worthwhile or something (how does wand affinity even work anymore? I have no idea.)

 

Thats a good point.. what does do exactly? Does it just give wands more charges? Or does it make them stronger? I mean.. I know it helps with wand crafting, which is useful by itself, but it would be nice to know if it has any kind of significant bonus's as well. I personally don't find a few extra charges that useful, although early game that can be life saving. I guess what I'm mainly asking is: is there a use at end game for high level Wand Lore?

 

Alchemy could totally get some toxic or acid resistance from experiments gone wrong. And wandcraft of course giving electric/magic/blasting resist due to backfiring wands.

 

Pyro + Ley Walker + Psionics is the real way to set things on fire and keep them away. Shove costing 1 mana minimum is absurd and OP as hell, I love it.

 

An excellent point, and ceded.

 

hmm.... there's something about fungal arts now that seems less useful :< it doesn't scale when you put more points into it. It takes forever to convert a zoo into shrooms now...

maybe cut back on the cool down by 4 each point you put into fungal arts? 24(-4*Fungal Arts), so starting at 20, eventually reaching a minimum of 4 or something?

or maybe even no cooldown when maxed, I mean by that point you'd have so many spores normally that cooldown isnt even an issue, that is if you weren't offering them up to the lutefisk god.

alternatively, you could just increase the number of shrooms that drop per level, or perhaps every other level, but something tells me that would produce more shrooms per corpse than normal., and I would still personally be OCD about cleaning up all those dead bodies... yeah.

 

RIGHT! I was going to change that. Psionic Shove will have a minimum cost of 2 and less scaling on the next update.


Also, for OCD/balance purposes, I'll probably just set the cooldown on the corpse-to-mushroom spell to 1. After all, the point isn't to make farming shrooms a chore; it's just to keep the choice of which power to use on the corpses.

 

I'm really looking to 1.10 whenever that happens, and the new modding tools that will come with it. Have you thought about incorporating Master Berserker into this, or do you have other plans to help melee players deal with 30% crit rate monsters?

Also, were you going to change Blackjack to something that isn't Sleep so it actually does something? Right now it wakes them up with the spell damage, I guess you could test if taking the spell damage from it makes monsters actually sleep, but the description itself says it "stuns" them.

 

My goal with the core skills rebalance isn't to address existing PvE problems -- there's plenty of mods that do that. It's just to make short-shrifted skills a little more shrifty. Also, Blackjack's sleep effect happens after it's damage effect -- and I know for certain I've seen it leave creatures asleep if they happen to be alone. I did re-look at Blackjack and realize there's no damageF (unlike Sneaky Shiv and Et Tu, both of which scale quite nicely). So I added a damageF and put 'resistable=0' on the Sleep effect. That's my nod toward people's complaints about Blackjack.

 

not to be an impatient duck, but any news on development? when's the projected date that the new version will be out?

I'm very much looking forward to it :>

hmm.... just an update real quick, radiant aura seems to be centered on the enemy that attacks you, rather than being centered on yourself. not sure if a bug or intentional, but its kinda cool :> It seems to be more useful for kiting now, it doesn't hit the enemy who attacked you, but everyone surrounding that enemy.

edit: except, it hits yourself now

mind if I poke around the XML a bit to see if I can't help find a workaround?

 

Trying to use the Shield skill on a new character crashes the game after the intro screen.

 

I'm not having any problems with the shield skill... is it just selecting it as a used skill that's crashing the game?

edit: just another suggestion, you said you would set mushroom farmer's cooldown to 1, why not 0? it requires a dead body anyways, and that way you don't have to go "right click, space, rightclick, space" like you do with hey, a rock!

speaking of hey, a rock!... 1 cooldown is kind of an odd number, not to mention you have to think about abuse with the lutefisk god... could you consider increasing the cooldown on that? maybe a faster version of lucky pick... even 4 turns cooldown would help prevent abuse...

you know what? I ask for way too much X_X

 

How about in just under an hour?

Odd. I'm sure I didn't touch any of the targeting code. I'll see if I can figure out what happened.

Because if you set cooldown to 0, the game considers it a Mana-based spell (it even lists the cost as o), which means all kinds of crazy stuff like 'triggeroncast' abilities will go off when you use it and you can't use it in an antimagic field.

Not at all, I think you raise a good point. I'll up the cooldown to 4.


P.S.: Onamar, I don't know where your crash is coming from, but I can start a game just fine with Shields on.