Dirt patches...

What are they for now? Do spores still drop?

 

Nothing at all, and no, they don't, because they're obsolete now.
Read the patch notes if you want to know more about it (I'm kind of tired and getting ready to sleep so I won't start an in-depth explanation now), it's related to the change in Fungal Arts.

 

Oooh, I see. Thanks. ^^

 

They should add magic beans that you can plant to grow floating platforms that carry you over water.

Or something.

 

You should be able to catch bugs in empty flasks, and use them on dirt patches to dig up stuff. Like gems.

 

Put a shovel in the game and let us dig the patches. 94.3% of the time the digging alerts a tremors-esque beast that appears and attacks, the other times we're rewarded with something nice.

 

In addition to my prior, not-especially-serious suggestion:

*Dirt spawns monsters. Specifically, vegetables and undead. Spawning rate on the patches is greater than the normal monster spawn rate, but not so great that it gets annoying. Let's say, 2 to 3 times normal. You can neutralize them by planting fruit on the patches, which turns them into trees. Trees can be destroyed with fire, acid, explosives, or pretty much anything that works on destroyable walls, but not by just whacking them with your foot because that doesn't make sense.

*Mushrooms no longer have a chance to turn into dirt patches when they die, because then you could end up with one-block corridors that are the only things connecting two halves of the dungeon being blocked by trees, and you have no way of destroying walls.

*If you drop a Fruitful Staff on a dirt patch, you get a tree that gives you things. Like money, or fruity booze. Or maybe a treant pet. Perhaps even artifacts. And an achievement: "The Giving Tree".

 

Dirt? Well, easy. I think you should be able to loot it and use it as a make-shift throwing weapon which blinds/distracts the enemy for a few turns.

 

dirt gets your shoes dirty as a debuff, could have no effect at all or slow your character or do something silly.
1/1000 odds dirt is quickdirt and you start to sink and if you dont move out of the way in a couple of turns you will die.

Something fun and silly like that

 

There's plenty of fruit in the game. Maybe you can plant it to grow fruit trees.

Hell, why not plant it and grow a cheese tree? Or a meat tree?

 

use plastic on footprints, make shoes, use metal on footprints, metal shoes.. lol

 

OH man I am so glad you implemented the changes we suggested to fungal arts. Sure you don't get nearly the mushrooms in the beginning, but the game flows FAR faster.

I do however have quite a few questions/thoughts about Fungal Arts (one of my favorite skills ever).

First: On the spore cloud procs seem to not work right.
Looking at the Dredmorpedia, the Battle Mycology has a 15% chance to proc something, but there is no ability listed, as if nothing was found from the datamine. In game It doesn't seem to do anything.

Another time I was able to get the fungling to display twice from the death of a single enemy. That makes me wonder if the proc checks are not additive. I would think that having them additive would be better than to check each one individually.

Dirt Ideas:
I really like the idea of searching dirt for minor items. Things that would be found in dirt, having been lost in time. Probably the most important one: Lockpicks. But also Zorkmids, Bolts, Thrown Items and things that couldn't break. Having the chance of a monster popping out (like a Giant Tunneling Wyrm using the Eely art) would be pretty sick as well.

 

If you're digging, unpressed ores and gems would be cool things to dig up too.

 

Two words: Booze Trees.
Two other words: Cheese Farms.

Here I'm thinking of the Animal Crossing thing where, if you have a golden shovel and bury a bag of gold, you'll grow a tree, which may or may not spawn three bags of gold, which may contain 100 gold apiece or 99,999 gold apiece. Make a craftable item like a little spade, and if you use it to bury booze or cheese in a patch of dirt, 100 turns later it may or may not give you three random boozes/cheeses.

Actually, I thought this would be a nifty thing to use for archaeologists - give the dirt patches a disarm chance (like, you have a 40% chance to get SOMETHING from the patch, but only if you're careful) and, if you succeed in "disarming" the dirt, by carefully brushing it away from whatever's underneath, you might find an artifact...or some ancient diggle bones, useful only for selling to Brax...or some extremely Aged Cheese or Aged Steak...or a note from the devs saying "HA-ha, aren't you glad you put those points into Archaeology, you Indy-wannabe." Essentially, a very small chance at something useful, and a good chance of receiving a comedy item.

Three more words: Suit o' Fisk. From the team that brought you equippable cheese comes Suit o' Fisk, a suit of armor made entirely of lutefisk! Terrify and disgust the dungeon monsters by running around with phlegmy chunks of fish paste glued to your otherwise naked body!

I think I need a nap.

 

Oh, hell yes, Archaeology should be able to dig up patches of dirt.

 

Not sure that's a good idea. It fits conceptually, but mechanically, Archaeology's already got enough going for it.