On Ninjitsu, I really don't like that Secret Sword can summon a ninjato. It's superior in every way to The Sword of Dinglenit, Son of Blork, which is a ~10000 zorkmid sword. It introduces too heavy a lucky reward for those runs where I get three or four of them on floor 1. Perhaps a better thing to do would be to start with a Tanto in the loadout, and have secret sword provide a variety of rare procs, perhaps even ones that scale on stealth.
Really? In order to get a drink out of Wild Magic, you have to; Score a Wild Surge, which assuming you have the skill maxed out (for some reason) on floor 1, is a 30.55% chance per cast. Then roll the "Wild Matter" surge out of the 4 possible surge types (cutting that 30.55% down to 7.6%) Then roll the "Boozeblast" surge out of the 8 different kinds of blast types (curring that 7.6% down to 0.9%) Then, for each of the 36 squares in Template 100, you have a 10% chance of getting a random booze, for an average of 3.6 booze per blast. 3.6 * .009 = an average of 0.0324 booze per spell cast So if you're casting, say, four hundred spells per dungeon level, you should get, on average, thirteen bottles of booze out of Wild Magic. If you have it maxed out. I can't account for luck of the draw -- that's what makes it Wild, after all -- but the math says your experience is probably a fluke. I don't want to discount your opinion, but I'd be interested to see if anyone else has the same experience before I make any changes. I consider that part and parcel of being a Wild Mage. Yeah, that's an issue. There's no way to force floater text at the moment, unfortunately. ...yeah, OK. I see what you're saying. Howz about I cut that Slashing down to, say, 5, cut the artifact quality down to 4, and drop the price to 4000? And as long as I'm at it, I'll make the Ninjato an even rarer grab by putting a <percent="20"> on the trigger, so it take an average of 500 casts of Secret Sword to nab the thing?
I've actually realized that I'm not so much concerned about the power of the ninjato so much as the luck factor involved in getting 0 to n of them. Runs where I summon 3 or 4 ninjato on the first floor feel kind of lucky and runs where I can't even get one feel kind of like I was cheated. Perhaps if the chance was really small it'd be an issue of being lucky to get one a run though, and knowing that you're unlikely to ever get it when you don't and not feeling as cheated? Like if it was an average of 1000 casts... 500 casts would work too really. Play around a bit and see what you can come up with, of course. I'd love to see a proc for secret sword though!
Yeah, on later playthroughs I didn't get quite as much booze. However, I tend to hoard my booze so it accumlates a fair bit. More importantly, it's not just the booze, but just the bunches of useful stuff that I can save up from those Wild Surges and then use when I need it (thus, those uncontrolled surges giving me stuff I can use in a controlled manner). I consider abilities that grant items pretty powerful (and I can pretty much say that I would've died if it wasn't for that thermal bomb I mentioned). In the end, i think it might simply come down to us having philosophical differences over things like item creating abilities. I think I do like Wild Magic for the most part. I can accept the risk of aggroing Brax being part and parcel of being a Wild Mage, but that makes the skillset something I'll only use now and then since it made me kinda nervous while playing.
Hmm...it's an interesting idea, but a lot of people have already said that the basic function of secret sword (which, if anyone didn't know, is what "shuriken" translates into English as) is close to OP as it is. I don't want to have to weaken it any further by adding a proc. I have done my job well.
Uhm... Not to be picky or anything... but... I noticed you mispelled Complete in your title, or was that done diliberately?
My appologies. I figured I should have read a bit to be sure it wasn't already mentioned. Should have known better.
Was thinking of making anti-poison heal using a base+%of maximum health per tick. Might keep it more useful in later dungeon levels, instead of just being forgotten.
OK, new version uploaded, minor revisions only. Ninjato disempowered. I discovered that I had apparently already set it to a 1 in 500 chance to spawn, so i left that alone. Antipoison now removes all poison debuffs from the main game (including a couple that I don't think are called anywhere, but they exist, so I neutralized them.) as well as granting healing scaling by your EDR (to fall in line with the other poisons in the set) and granting temporary Toxic Immunity (it just made sense -- you can't have poison and antipoison in the same body, or you'd explode.) Nothing huge. I also finally started that documentation I promised -- just the flavor text for now, but more is coming. I'm still hoping to hear more stories of people using (or failing to use) Archmage's 'ritual' buffs. Has ANYONE gotten past the first step of Arcane Consecration? How about Eyes of the Elder Beings? Anyone used Modal Magic yet? Any opinions on the spells and the effects they create? (I'm really surprised no one has bitched me out about how easily Vile Archmagic makes it to wander through the dungeon taking out huge quantities of walls.) Thanks!
I enjoy making walls go poof. I have not yet gotten past the first stage of either of those. I read the xml thinking I must be missing something obvious, but I still cannot get them to trigger past stage one. Next on my plate will be adding 1000 turns to each counter to allow me to try all manner of nonsense to get them to progress. Modal Magic is useful. I like it. From the sound of things, there needs to be much more potent poison monsters and traps in the game to make the Poisoner skill more useful. (It may already be there, somewhere deep that I have yet to get to.) *Edit* Hmmm. Some bug to try to find now. I cast Vile Archmage and the game locked hard. I have a boatload of mods loaded, so I may not be able to narrow it down. I do not even know that Archmage was the skill/mod that killed it. It could have been something altogether different. I will post again if I can reproduce the crash in a duplicateable scenario.
My Archmage save got eaten when the upgrade to the Actual Patch came through. ;_; I'm planning on taking the skill out for a spin again soon, just as soon as I figure out what to pair it with for, you know, cheap spells.
I've been playing with Archmage and I honestly don't think either of the Ritual buffs work. I'll try some more today and see if I can get it to work.
Honestly I think Archmage needs some work. I cannot figure out what any of the skills will do at any time. There are clearly many effects that can be used with the skill, but it lacks anything more than some support via Modal Magic and the few useful abilities it can be used to get. I find that it cannot be used without a damage magic skill of some sort. Promethean Magic works well, as does Necronomeconomics. But Archmage could really use a single direct damage spell that is clear and easy to understand. Other than that I love it. I just think it could use some refinement and perhaps a spoiler explaining the spells in ludicrous detail for those of us that cannot figure it out.
So I just installed your mod. It looks sweet. Now if only I could play with it... My initial issue seems to stem from the game not finding some art assets it needs. However, after trying a fast fix (grabbing a pic, changing it over to .png with GIMP, naming it appropriately and sticking it into the mod's skills folder), it still crashes, missing further assets (screenshot of error message appended). I am using the "Essential DoD Core Skill Rebalance" by Essence, FAXPAX (which has a similar error with a skill called "butcher" rather than "whatever," but I'm headed over there to post a similar message for his/her perusal shortly), and "More Grilled Cheese" by Lockesly L'Crit and I don't have Realm of the Diggle God (though I am using a Steam version). Also, not that I think it's important, but it's better to supply more info than the IT guys need, I'm running 64-bit Win7. NINJEDIT: I'm an idiot, FAXPAX needs RotDG to run, so ignore that bit. >_>
I've found that Archmage goes well with Radiant Wizard or Mana Mastery (if you can survive till level 2), as both give quick, relatively cheap offensive spells. If you need immediate offense from Archmage only, try targeting an enemy standing one Knightly Leap away from you with Elemental Archmagic. It's expensive, but it should burn them, light them on fire, and knock them away. (Also works for getting items off of islands and possibly even blasting open secret walls (I don't actually know that, but I think it will work.)) I've been kind of distracted a lot by work lately, but I'm going to get on the Case of the Failing Rituals ASAP. Thanks all for your reports. RagnorakTres, are you still having issues after you removed FaxPax from your list of mods to activate?