I'd like to add 3 spells to the existing Archeology Skill tree eventually. The first spell that I'll describe below could just be an item. I've started going through the skillsDB.xml but it isn't making much sense to me yet. In the meantime, I'm wondering if one of you Modders would just make this first spell/item implementations for me OR item and explain what was done? It will probably be more work than I'm thinking, but I'm also thinking this will be a copy/paste job. Any takers? Here are the spell ideas and just have them added in the spell line of the Archeology skill tree. Spell 5: Dine'O'Might! Item: Same as spell but can only be thrown 2-3 grid squares. Not clear across the room. A combination offensive/defensive spell. Basically a 3x3 aoe that can target anything, to include the player. Damage: Power/Damage doesn't matter to much at this time. Blasting/Set of Fire/Asphyxiation. Effects: - 1x Knockback (to include the player if the player is within the blast area, but not in the center, preferably. - 3x3 wall destruction. Like a baby Bolt of Mass Destruction, but only 3x3 and not nearly as strong or fiery. - Cooldown and Mana cost: Something fairly large.. mebeh 50cooldown and 25-50 mana. Archeologyst really are not mages and imo should pay big for actual spell casting. This is a duel purpose spell/item. Offensive and destructive. But if centered on the player, damaging. The idea is not to hit mobs hard, but more of a digging tool, that would obviously hurt mobs if cast/thrown on them. The Football (Interior Dredmorating item??) I feel should work this way. But you can't target a wall with it. Modifying the football to allow for grid destruction, knock back and floor/player targeting is what I'm looking for. Any help/guidance would be appreciated while I start getting use to the .xmls. Thanks.
Good point about the wall-targeting. That would make the football a lot more useful. I'll happily update the football to add that to the next version of Interior Dredmorating, if you'd like. IIRC, it would take like half a line of code. The only reason I didn't include it before is that's already basically a BMD but much cheaper, and easier to get due to the way thrown vending machines work. I was very nervous about it being too good until I'd had time to really test it out. Which I've done since then, and now agree that targeting walls wouldn't likely be a big balance issue. I'm not sure about adding knockback or reducing the blast radius, though. Knockback on a football would allow you to use a bunch of them to punch open the ranks of zoos, and thus get a squidbolt (or even just more footballs) in deeper. Reducing the blast radius would actually increase the reliability of the football because you'd only destroy walls where you wanted them and never accidentally open up an adjacent room with more monsters than you can handle. May I ask why? Archaeology is really good already. The amount of bonus XP you can get is huge, and allows you to max out all your other skills way early. It's purely a support skill, but it enables you to get to your attack powers earlier, and gives you something to do with artifacts in the mid game when zorkmids don't matter nearly as much as the thousands of XP a decent artifact can render up. If you poke around the forums, there's a ton of people who state that they always take archaeology on every build. It's certainly not underpowered. IIRC, in the main game, only 3 skills go above level 6. Werediggle has 8 levels, but I assume that's to compensate for the fact that while you're in werediggle form you can't use activated skills from any of your other trees. There's two other skills with 7 levels, but one of them is Demonology which has all sorts of other drawbacks to keep it in check. So, in general, adding a 7th or 8th level to a skill tree isn't trivial. The only thing that keeps Archaeology in check is that you could run out of skill levels to take somewhere between floors 12 and 15. If you add three extra levels to the end of Archaeology, then it changes from "speeds up your level gain" to that plus "allows you to attain a level total higher than any build without Archaeology", which would make it that much more of a 'must have' skill. And if those levels are attack spells, that's even more over-powered, since it would no longer be relegated to the realm of support skill. It just seems like there's a major balance issue there. To each their own, I guess.
The why is pretty much because there are some features I think it could benifit from. It is a good support line, but it is primarily a numbers Skill Line. I'd like to use those 3 spell slots to give it a bit more... non artifact umph. In the line of support and appropriete for the skill line, like a digging ability. how to archeologyst find stuff in real life? They dig. I am interested in balance. But nothing to much more powerful that what is already available. The general spells I'm thinking are: Keeping in mind a Archaeologist is more of a... explore/scientist than a mage. 1. Digging (possibly able to use as an offensive spell). Better than Golomancy digging, but not as nice as Were-Diggle digging. Diggles dig by nature (I guess). Golomancy digging is kind of out of place for me. Not... cannon, for a lack of a better word at the moment. Also, the Upsure mod has digging, but it is.. odd. I don't get why the author made it the way he did. +1 Trap Sight Radius +1 Burliness. 2. Polymorphing non artifacts, much as Fungle polymorphing. Polymorphing withing the same class. Staves can only poly into staves, etc. +1 Trans-mutative Resistance, +1 Trap Sight Radius 3. Krong negative attibute eraser, but with a significant risk of adding more negative attributes to the item. Not able to add positie attributes, just an erase spell. Same as...as Heckforge, but on Kronged items only. -1 Stubborness and -1 Sagicity. +1 Righteousness. The digging spell would be a weak/medium offensive spell as well as a digging spell. The other two would just be more numbers to add to the skill line. All and all, conveniences. Not so much direct combat survival. Negative attributes as a ambiance thing, really and to cut back on some of the OP uberness. That is pretty much how my ideas are going toward Archeology. Digging is a good example. It fits with the skill tree, its tool like (explosives), would have high mana cost as an Archeologist really isnt a mage. Some penalties to keep things in balance check. Being able to target yourself and/or be within the blast radius... I'm very interested in balance issues as these are significant spells. But even if it leads to OP, it isn't that OP unless you max out the skill first and focust on exp gain and lucky kronging. Btw, I was hoping you would give some feedback on this. Where is Wi$p to like your post? I would like the football adjustment. I can't tell you how many times/ways I've tried to make it work that way. Have to loor a critter towards the wall spot I want to take out.
#1 is of course possible, but I don't think you can do #2 and #3. Polymorphing is possible, as you can make a spell require a sacrifice to work (and that will expand in 1.0.10) but there's no conditional "if/then" statements in the xml, so you can't make it sacrifice any one item and generate another thing of the same type. Most of the Krong stuff is hard-coded, and I don't think you can make it remove Krong negatives other than when Marcus Brody misbehaves. Usually with a toothbrush, not dynamite. At least not since the old school Howard Carter days. Archaeology is so powerful, though. Given that it's the best source of bonus XP in the game (by probably an order of magnitude), it's probably the most dangerous skill (in terms of balance) to give extra levels to. Every extra level you give it makes the bonus XP that much more powerful and important. Bumping it up to 8 levels would be way over the top. In my last play with that skill, I must have scored at least 150,000 xp from artifacts, maybe more. I know there was one item alone that got me 10,000 xp and quite a few 3,000 xp artifacts, plus all the dinky 60 to 480 xp items on little islands. That's a lot of levels, most of them early on. And that wasn't even utilizing any crafting skills to abuse it, which could probably knock my numbers out of the park. I agree that digging seems out of place in golemancy, but adding digging somewhere else doesn't do anything to make Golemancy more logical. In general, one should be very careful any time the description for a new spell is "better than" something else, especially when the something else is a capstone of an existing popular tree. On the other hand, it's not a head-to-head game, so it's not like you're hurting anyone by modding yourself and advantage. If you want it, do it. I'll try to leave on a more helpful note: If you had your digging spell replace Ancient Kronian Ritual instead of follow it, the balance issue would probably clear up. That would trim the archaeology xp by 25% to 33%, I suspect, and would also prevent arch's xp bonus from being useful later in the game via having extra levels.
