Dredmor Patch 1.0.10 RC9 Feedback Thread - I Believe in The Lever Fix

XML Changes between RC5 and RC6:

Code:

Expansion craftDB.xml now has appropriate document element.
 
Items
 
    Cheesy Omelette
        HP 56 -> 36
 
Monsters
 
    Hungry Diggle
        Slashing Dmg: 4 -> 2
        Piercing Dmg: 3 -> 10
        Stats
            Rogue: 8 -> 6
   
    Thirsty Diggle   
        Slashing Dmg: 5 -> 10
        Piercing Dmg: 5 -> 22
        Stats
            Fighter: 13 -> 16
            Rogue: 12 -> 16
   
    Dredmor:
        AI Spell Percent: 50 -> 80
        Stats
            Wizard: 60 -> 70
        Bonus Armor: 30 -> 40
        Bonus Health: 400 -> 800
        Spells
            Lingering Dullness Missile -> Strong Lingering Dullness Missile
            Lingering Weakness Missile -> Strong Lingering Weakness Missile
            Monster Blink removed.
 
Rooms
 
    No more belts in the starting room.
 
Skills
 
    Fungal Arts
   
        Mushroom Farmer (Skill 1)
            Sporification percent: 27 -> 17
        Slime-herder (Skill 2)
            Fungling percent: 23 -> 15
        Battle Mycology (Skill 4)
            Fungling percent: 13 -> 10
        Fungal Master of Yuggoth (Skill 5)
            Fungal Bloom 1 percent: 5 -> 6
            Fungal Bloom 2 percent: 5 -> 6
       
Spells
 
    Invisible Geometries Drain appears to have its 75 MP drain fixed.
 
    Fungal Bloom 1
        Spores removed from spawn list   
 
    Fungal Bloom 2
        Spores removed from spawn list
        Night Cap removed from spawn list
   
Text
 
    New insult added which references some movie about soap.
 

Effect of changes on mushrooms:

New percentages:

1. 17%
2. 15%
3. 11%
4. 10%
5. 6% + 6%

Average mushrooms per 100 corpses: 65.
Chance of getting at least one shroom from a corpse: 50%

 

Now that beating Dredmor works again, I loaded up Dorfenheiser to get my Dead Dread achievement on. The difference in Dredmor is noticeable. My save had Dreddy with about 1/10 of his HP left, so a few clockwork drill bolts were enough to kill him on RC5...and it took me five tries to kill him in RC6. Finally just hit him with Bolts of Doubt and a Bolt of Mass Destruction, because dagnabit, he had no points left in his HP bar whatsoever but he was STILL FREAKING GOING. Ate a Nerfed Omelette, starting running for my life, and finally Fleshbore killed his bony butt...for a brief moment, I was concerned that the game was going to crash, because though Dorfenheiser was doing his dance, no Congratulations! popped up...but I clicked the screen, and got my achievement, and my congrats. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be? I rarely create a character that makes it that far down.

Anyway, it's looking good so far, playing an RC5 save on GR sans PD to see if I can get some crashes going...maybe I'll start a new character to try to break stuff. Lookin' darned good so far, though. Go team!

 

Out of curiosity's sake, what's with the random nerfing of Cheesy Omelets?
I rarely made them, because I don't like giving up the fairly healing cheese to grind up into the grated cheese.

And the difficulty jump in Dredmor is going to be really noticable now. I don't see how people can beat him now if he has that high of an increase in health. From 400 to 800?
Is that only on Going rogue, or does he still have that 800 extra health on Elvish Easy?
I'm really confused how you expect him to be defeated now at all. Doubling his health, without reducing his defense is a really bad idea.
I really question your decision here.
This isn't going to make him harder, it's going to make him unkillable to any melee build. And I thought you all agreed to make melee more viable. I question this development on that end.

I'm sorry, but I can't help but be personally slighted by this change. It's the exact opposite of what you claimed you would be doing, balancing melee and making Dredmor harder, not impossible.

Also, is Vamprism still totally useless? I remember reading about it being changed to do Necromantic damage, so I assume that means it would work on anything that doesn't.

Sorry for any inconsistencies between this and reply posts, I edited a few things that I thought sounded rude.

 

Unless you play with the werediggle skill (in which case you'll have many more of them), you get a few dozens of diggle eggs during the course of the game. And you need 4 of them to make a deep omelette. Cheesy omelettes, on the other hand, only need 1 diggle egg and 3 grated cheese, of which you can easily get a few hundreds of, thus making it broken in comparison to the deep omelette (how the heck do you want to win the game with a melee character if you don't spend a little effort to craft cheesy omelettes [either the old or the nerfed ones] is beyond me, but that's not the topic here).

The only thing that really might be noticeable here is the increase in armour - 10 points might be much for players who intend to cherry-tap him to death with weak ranged weapons.
If you do have enough healing items (make yourself some omelettes, seriously) and some resistances, it's not that difficult to survive. And if you can survive, then you can hit him (PROTIP: "To defeat Lord Dredmor, hit him until he dies.").

With ease. It's just a matter of hitting him a few more times, really. Now that you can find more adequate items, it's not going to be that much more difficult.

Actually, he is quite killable with melee builds. Armour Absorption stat only affects the basic damage, so stacking a few points of other damage types can help. And it's not like his damage was really buffed, as it's only about a 10% increase, meaning you just have to survive there for a little longer.
Yes,winning with melee builds is more difficult. But it is by no means impossible, and merely requires a little more luck and better planning and management (which, sadly, you seem to neglect, looking at your comment about not making one of the best healing items in the game because you didn't want to grind cheese - you obviously don't need to grind every piece of cheese you find, but grinding just enough of it to use up your diggle egg supply [unless you need them for other crafting skills] is what you should be doing before attempting to get into heavy combat).

It should. And it's not "totally" useless - it just makes the game harder if you don't have any healing skills as it changes health from a semi-finite into a finite resource.

 

XML bugs/things that are still outstanding:

• "Mid-Range Toxic Spore Cloud" does not exist in spellDB but is referenced by the Fungal Arts skill. This skill previously referenced "Mini Toxic Spore Cloud".
• "Consume Beverage" does not exist in spellDB but is referenced by the Thirsty Diggle monster. You might've meant to write "Consume Booze" (which does exist).
• Expansion wand recipes do not require a burnt-out wand. Also the laser wand recipe should probably be in the base game.
• There's two identical recipes for the mirror shield. One of them should probably use the Filligreed Silver Shield instead of the Heater Shield.

 

That's part of the reason you play on Elvishly Easy. No offense intended, just saying, Cheesy Omelets were massively overpowered. Turning every single Diggle Egg you find into 56 HP just by grinding up a few of the MASSIVE PILES OF CHEESE you find in every game was one of the easiest decisions you could ever make. Even at 36 HP, I'm still going to be doing it in every game just to save space in my inventory.

 

The first time I fought Dredmor, he murdered me three times before I finally managed to weaken him in melee enough to pelt him down in ranged. That was before he was updated. And that was on floor 15.

And I'm going to continue to play on Elvish Easy. Why should Dredmor have that much health on Elvish Easy? Wouldn't the HP Scaler work for him too?
Okay, everyone, I kind of freaked out. I understand why the changes were made.
I can't help freaking out sometimes, it's just the way I am.
I don't mean to be a bit more crazy than the Joker mixed with Rorschach from the Watchman.
" And it's not "totally" useless - it just makes the game harder if you don't have any healing skills as it changes health from a semi-finite into a finite resource."
No, it did become useless after the change before, where it only worked on 2 enemy types in the game. Now maybe it can actually be used the whole game.

I'm just a bit nervous about enjoying a game where every time I come close to the final boss, he gets changed to be made a lot harder.
It's like, I'm being punished for not beating this game a dozen times already. Or for playing Terraria a lot more than this recently.

Also, Essence, Big Reds still punch like a nuclear bomb in your face on Elvish Easy. So, it may be called Easy, but it's not.
Oh, and is the amulet/pants/gloves not updating resistances fixed finally?
I had an amulet that I can't get to recognize any of it's resistances, because I have no other amulet to swap it out for.

 

I noticed a potential exploit of the mushroom spawning mechanic: it seems that if you kill a large number of enemies on the same tile (e.g., by luring a zoo into a narrow corridor in order to kill them one by one), the spawn rate of mushrooms goes through the roof. I just got nearly 600 shrooms (and yes, I sat there and counted as I picked them ) from a 94-enemy zoo, which is definitely not in line with either 65 per 100 corpses, or 50% spawn rate.
Sorry I wasn't able to point this out before you pushed RC6--I know you were hoping this would be the final revision--but this seems kind of game-breaking (or at least balance-breaking).

 

...yet another exploit caused by 'affectsCorpses = 0' not being the default.

 

98 Pound Weakling, Playing For Both Teams, and You Used All The Glue On Purpose achievements are still not working for me. I am using the Steam version, and have gotten the Dead Dread achievement, so I know achievements work, just not these ones. Also, haven't been able to replicate it, but a few times when a Gnome has cast a spell (either teleport or easy target) while I'm walking (I use the keyboard, not the mouse), I lose a turn.

Teeny, unimportant bugs. Also, Cruely Barbed Plastic Bolts. Haven't gotten a crash yet, and I've scummed several times to see if I could. Gonna keep on workin' hard to break things, but it looks and acts so good so far.

Edit:

I did mention this last time...I think of it as a "bonus" for proper planning...that is, if you kill a bunch of monsters on one tile, then sporification is triggered on it, you wind up with mass fertilizer for the spores - effectively giving you huge farming potential. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I don't consider it game-breaking - I consider it a reward for strategic slaying.

 

Srry if this has allready been addresed, don't mean to spam, but:

- The wandcrafting orb (lathe?) thingy can't be sold to the shopkeeper, or at least couldn't the last time I played. I'm not sure if it can be put into the cube either.

 

So after all my complaining about Blood Mage I'd be remiss if I didn't point out how Big Game Hunter is now a fairly game breaking skill. Not to the same extent as that skill, but Hunters are still getting a lot of free HP out of the game now. And I mean a lot.

Case in point. Butcher now gives so much meat that, at the end of DL8, I have close to 800 ground meat in inventory. That's a stockpile of close to 2400 HP waiting in the wings. Granted, it takes a long time to wring all that HP out of the meat. Granted also, this is with a character that throws stuff at diggles for a living, so he hasn't been eating as much, but still.

2400 HP.

Total points invested in the skill? Nada. Not a one. BGH could very well become the new Burglary, or even rival Blood Mage in terms of must take skills. It's not balanced right now.

I suggest one, or some combination, of the following:

1) Reduce the proc rate of the first Butcher. Maybe make it 30-40%, enough to be noticeable but not nearly so rare as it was. 75% seems quite high, even if it does trigger on kill.

2) Restrict the capstone Butcher to animals. Even with the taxa limit on the first one, I'm getting a lot of meat. If its really bothersome, increase the proc rate on this skill (although that might mean the first proc has to be lower, more in the 25% range.) Also, it feels really weird to carve a steak out of an golem and munch on it. Don't get me started on undead meat.

3) Don't spawn steaks. These can be upgraded twice: once by grilling them and again by grinding them. An Aged Steak that has been through the G&G (grill and grinder) enjoys a 400% increase in HP. That adds up.

4) Make grinding meat an incremental decrease in HP, like cheese, rather than an increase, so I can't grind up a bunch of meat and get approximately 20% more HP out of my meats as I would otherwise. I like this option the least, as it also punishes non-BGH players.

5) Whatever madness you guys think of.

 

I OBJECT!

It may offer more HP, but it takes far more turns to consume, so it's much less useful in a pinch, so it's already balanced.

 

I'd be less concerned about the HP and more about the free Lutefisk. (And, really, how concerned about that should anyone be?)

Eating 3 HP in one turn is not very effective. It only works between fights and not during a fight. You still need high HP food for that. Otherwise you take a ton of damage trying to eat all that meat paste. Now, if there were some hamburger, meatball, or meatloaf recipes, then all that ground meat would be really good, but broken?

Melee characters need an edge on mages. Right now they're just not as good. (Although I have not tested the new melee changed much.) Giving melee characters a skill that nets them a lot of free food doesn't seem game breaking to me. I've won with melee characters before and I usually get so many steaks, cheese, sandwiches, and omelets, that having 8,000 ground meat wouldn't make a difference at all. Looking at a number like 2400 HP out of context doesn't mean a thing. If you have other, better food sources, then it doesn't matter if you have 24,000,000 HP of ground meat.

Food isn't a good source of healing. You only heal one HP per turn. As a mage I can cast Knit Flesh and heal huge chunks of HP over four turns! The only way to effectively use food in a pinch is to eat a very high HP food item then run away from the monsters until you have healed completely. You can't do that with ground meat anyway. Sure, you can heal to full between every fight, but mages can do that without even using an item. Just walk in circles to get mana back, and cast healing spells.

In short, food stinks. 3HP food stinks bad.

 

With RC6, my character just died on autosave, quite mysteriously especially considering I was not doing anything other than browsing recipes on my alchemy kit. The character was at 8 hp, was not doing any action that takes a turn, bam, autosave, character dead.

 

From reading the spell, I don't think this is how it works. The spell, "Sporification" is triggered on enemy death. It has two trigger effects itself. One is "Fungal Bloom 1" and the other is "Spore Cloud Effect". Spore Cloud Effect is just a mine that deals 1 toxic damage. Fungal Bloom is a "spawnitemfromlist" effect. The spore cloud is not what spawns the fungus when a corpse is under it. That's a separate effect of the Fungal Bloom which also has nothing to do with corpses.

I have never made a mod, so I may be interpreting this wrong. I'm not doubting that there's some kind of bug, but your explanation doesn't fit with the way the spells work.

The only way this makes sense is that there's some bug with targetKillBuff where if a monster dies on top of a corpse, this effect triggers for each corpse in the pile, including the one you just killed.