Essential DoD Skills I and II Finally Game-Ready!

That works and looks wonderful. As soon as I get the last 8 Ninpo effects playtested, I'll upload the revision with the new Mana Crush graphics. Hopefully tomorrow.

Added digglemaggot to the Modloader accreditation. Thanks, man, that was awesome.

 

OK, all known issues once again resolved, Mana Crush's graphics updated, and all is good.

 

Oh, I assume he does. I just know i had the same problem, and doing that fixed it. Seems that DoD doesn't like GIMP's standard .png manufacture.

 

Ninjitsu doesn't exist on my list of skills anymore, infact I don't even see Essentials dod skills II at all.

EDIT: downloaded on page 4 works perfect.

No Kuri spell :/

 

BAH! It turns out that an innocent change to the mod.xml file (replacing 'and' with '&') caused the XML to go haywire and the game to fail to recognize the mod. It's fixed; please redownload the version on Page 1.

 

Well you might be able to use & (its usage for escaping characters is why it's invalid).

 

Here's my review of Bushido and QiGong, after using them to beat the game in a pure warrior build:

Bushido: I was concerned that this would be horribly horribly overpowered when I saw the results of getting "into the jaws of death" by floor 2, but really, it seems to balance out quite nicely by the end of the game. Mind Like Meatloaf is definitely handy, but it renders food almost completely useless, so maybe the cooldown needs to be increased. Also, the regen bonus of Mt. Self doesn't seem to be working for some reason. Finally, I find it hard to justify why the starter sword the skill gives you is 2.5 times stronger than the starter weapons you get from any of the vanilla weapon skills.

QiGong: I was excited about this one, but I'm sorry to say I was rather disappointed. The stat bonuses are cool and the concept itself is epic, but the problem is in the attack skills. This skill tree cripples your mana regen, and thus pretty much assumes you won't be using any wizard archetype skills. In this context, the bonus it provides is largely insufficient. My warrior armor pretty much constantly left me at 0 , and even when I removed my heavy armor and put on some mage equipment from a distance, the damage from Qi blast was negligible. Even Spirit Bomb did almost no damage. The bonus needs to be increased to compensate for the reliably non-magical nature of any build that will include it. If you're concerned that doing so could potentially be abused in a wizard build by way of alcohol, maybe add a crippling debuff that procs whenever you drink. The stat bonuses and "cleanse Meridians" were really all I found myself using from this skill tree.

Thanks for making these epic skills, and I hope you consider my feedback! Keep up the good work!

 

If I only wanted to use the Warlockery Skill (need to save up on skill slots), what would I need to remove? would I be able to remove the other 2 skills?

 

I consider this a way of addressing the inventory management needs of high-level Smith/Tink warriors.

That's different. It works fine for me. It's not a health regen bonus, it's an actual per-turn health gain. If you're looking for it on your character sheet, you won't see it.

Mostly because I actually felt like Kiaido was a bit weak in the early game.

Did you patch up the templateDB.xml file so that Spirit Bomb's fourth hit went off? Without that fourth hit, it's kind of weak. And Qi Blast wasn't ever intended to be a killing blow, more of an attention-getter and softener-up of baddies.

 

Yeah I'm aware it's not a regen bonus, but I wasn't recovering any health. If it helps, I'm using the Mac Pack version, but I couldn't see any significant updates in it since then.

 

That's odd. I have no idea why that would be happening. Or wouldn't, rather.

So far, my attempt to break QiGong (QiGong, Bushido, Viking Magic, Blood Magic, Ley Line Walking, Alchemy, Vampirism) is actually going pretty well. It looks like using other skills to overcome the lack of mana/mana regen and then just pumping Magic Power is actually pretty successful. I'll let you know when I get down to the lower levels if it feels like it needs more , but at the moment (DL4) it's keeping up quite nicely.

 

OK, so after delving down to DL 11 trying to max out QiGong's effectiveness, I've seen the light.

I'm not only boosting the Magic Power gain to +2 per QiGong level, but I'm also increasing the damage scaling of Qi Blast slightly. It's still not functional as a main offense, but it'll at least actually work to soften up Big Reds and Arch Diggles a bit.

Granted, you can't go full-armor and have much of a noticeable benefit, so there's still a bit of a drawback, but that's what you get for having free AoE nukes on your warrior.

 

I'm not sure if it's this mod causing it or a conflict with another mod, but QiGong seems to crash the game after the intro screen when I try to make a character with it.

Edit: Yep, must have been a conflict, I deactivated a few mods that I barely use anyways and everything worked out just fine.

 

One more very small update -- Poison Darts weren't acting right. But since Poison Darts aren't summoned by Poisoneer anymore, it's kind of a null-and-void issue probably not worth re-downloading.

 

So, in ESSENCE *giggle* does this have any conflicts or make any problems with other mods? Cos i am not fond of changing basic in-game files with other. I would accept it if you told me cos i really want to check those skills soon.

 

It shouldn't conflict.
Thought I can't really answer if I don't know what kind of OS you are using, since OS-X version has some kind of problem with multiple mods right now.

 

Windows 7 64-bit

 

Then you should have no problems with it. Just check authors' notes for each mod to see if they aren't incompatible with something else individually, to stay on the safe side (I think there are 2 mods that don't work, or at least did not work, together, made by the same person).

 

Yeah, Trickster and Disciple of Chaos are mutually exclusive.

 

Essence, I'm sorry, but I think bushido might be pretty overpowered, which is a shame, because it's a lot of fun to use.

It grants you free healing whenever you're alone, up to 120 total points of damage resistance, ties with killer vegan for highest attack power bonus of any skill tree, and generally eliminates much of the need for caution and planning.

I'm sorry, it's painful for me to say this, but I think it needs to be said. This ability makes the game way too easy.

My suggested changes:

*remove mind like meatloaf entirely. The skill tree is longer than most skill trees anyway.
*Nerf jaws of death to only provide 1 point of resistance per stacked instance of the ability rather than 2.
*Remove the +5 critical from the first level, as well as two of the three melee power bonuses. That amount of critical is simply obscene for a first level skill. 5 critical is generally only granted at the last level of skill trees that boost critical. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any skill tree provides that much melee power.

I'm really sorry to be so harsh, but balance is really important to me, and I know it's important to you as well.