I'm creating this thread so I can place down some ideas and show you guys what I've already programmed. This is my first time modding anything, and my code knowledge is fairly limited, so bear with me. Advice on balance would be greatly appreciated. This is a wizard skill based on DoT and avoiding damage until the critter dies of poison. Unlike other wizard skills, I've given the player incentives to be in the thick of battle. Galactic Bee Herder The strong willed choose to herd ravenous intergalactic beasts without name. You? You herd bees Level 1: Space Honey +1, +1 Bees are social creatures, but space bees are social drinkers. It makes your eyes buzz Level 2: Inappropriate Use of Space Bees Through the power of interprative dance, you can insert space bees into places they wouldn't normally be welcome. What were once pants, are now beehives! This is your bread and butter skill. It's a target DoT that does damage for 5 turns. Intended to scale well. Level 3: They Live Inside +1, +2 They live inside you, they see what you see, eat who you eat. Gives player a buff which will last one hit. Any contact will result in the enemy gaining "Thaumite Infection". Level 4: Move Like the Space Bee To be one with the space bees, you must move like the space bees. This generally just involves jumping all over the place and making strange noises. This is a teleport/jump skill which lets you move 2 blocks. Level 5: Bees of Shocking Realisation Summon a cloud of philosobees who's venom opens the mind to the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, you are really, really tiny. Ofcourse, bees tend to think of these things a lot. This is an anchored AoE that will inflict and leave anything hit with a DoT for 10 turns. Level 6: Hive Mind Bees can be aweful persuasive (with the stinging and the screaming). Not exactly a magic charm, but it might as well be. A 10 turn charm that does 10 turns worth of scalable putrefying damage. Changelog July15: Fixed up things so they don't crash, it's playable now. Bees of Shocking Realisation now has estimated instant damage instead of a DoT for balance/testing purposes. July16: Nerfed "Inappropriate Use of Space Bees", added "They Live Inside", and fixed code for Bees of Shocking Realisation. July17: Running on steam workshop (gosh, that was harder than I expected). Tweaked They Live Inside to be a 1 hit buff with 100% chance of casting Thaumite Infection Hive Blind nerfed and mana upkeep added. July20: Switched level 3 and 4, then changed Hive Mind to Hive Blind. Made Hive Blind capstone. July25: Dots are now indicated clearer (dummy buff nonsense).
Well, I'm honoured And I just did some quick edits of existing skill images. Thought it would give the idea a more solid feel.
Alright. I came back from the dead to say this... I'll try to keep it brief ... ... Ready? OMGLOLWUTBBQBSOD and a drawn out series of expletives that would be entertaining to write, but would take entirely too long. The reason for my shock/anger/distress is fairly simple. Why U no have SPACE HONEY RECIPE? No seriously. This skill needs a mechanic that's built around the production and use of SPACE HONEY. Is important. Very Important. Because. My intuition here is to include a nuke that allows you to turn a monster who's under the influence of a "bees" debuff into delicious honey (spell would need to check for relevant debuff). Furthermore, each level of the tree should unlock SPACE HONEY based item recipes for epic funzies. E.g. Cake + Space Honey = Space Honey Cake (a lie made of honey and SPACCCCCCEEEEEEEEEE) which is in a fact A TRAP that stuns an enemy for an extended period of time, and afflicts them with the "IT IS DELICIOUS" debuff that allows you to recover each time you hit them. ... I just reread this post... maybe eating that mushroom wasn't a good idea after all...
Ignoring Allur's gross liberal use of memes, I think level 4 shouldn't make you completely blind--or if it still does, make it the capstone, so that players have a choice over whether or not to get it. Otherwise, this is a clever skill tree with great art that I'm probably going to be trying out if it ever goes into the workshop.
Allur, you'l be glad to know I've got it written down in my notebook to put in some space honey (freshly squeezed from the space bee udder). It will probably just drop like tofu or Big Game Hunter's Butcher ability. I feel recipes might be a bit too ambitious considering I only learned how to code 2 days ago Megaron, thanks for that. I was trying to work in a little bit of risk and reward, but I'll try reducing the blindness to see how it feels. I hope you'll enjoy it when it's done.
Am I allowed to bump? Just want to say that it's currently all fixed up and ready to go. I'd really love to hear back regarding balance and Hive Blind, as suggested by Megaron. After a single playthrough I adjusted some values, so hopefully not much will change. Enjoy!
Weekends are when i get around to testing these things. Was meaning to have a look before, but couldn't make time. If i get to test it proper, i'll let you know. However having dabbled a lot with "supertanky" builds, my intuition is that combined with a few levels of druid/bushido/master of arms, "they live inside/hive blind" has game breaking potential. The real question is how much. Imo, if it lets you break the game (or at the very least monster-zoos) for a 15+ point investment, then that's fair because well, you obviously built for it, forgoing a lot of more offensive options on the way. Also, regarding I blame the shrooms. Not the bees. See what i did there?
I can see where Hive Blind could be gamebreaking, I didn't really factor in those skills when I conceived it. My reasoning was that mages would need the sight to cast, but if taken with some warrior skills...Heh, could prove troublesome along with the thaumites that will spawn every so often with the player being hit. Perhaps reducing the player's life at a constant rate (because, y'know, bees in the eyes has to hurt), would be a possible fix? It would be less than the incoming damage, but still a way to deter players from sitting there casting it over and over again.
Personally, I think you need to settle down on what you want the tree to be before going in. If you have a lot of great ideas, don't worry too much about getting all of them into one mod. You can always make another for stuff you're not using. While Hive Blind+they live inside are interesting concepts, they essentially opposed to something that's built around "dodging around until the DoT kills them". The fact of the matter is, you typically need HUGE spellpower to get anything out of DoTs in this game which means little to no durability. While introducing the tanky option is seems to give the player more variety, in practice... Well if the damage stats (i.e base and/or spellpower scaling) on the Hive Blind+They Live Inside are too good, then there would be no point to play with this in a caster because 1. going tanky would let you have the damage AND the durability 2. going for a pure mage build would still imply you taking some dangerous risk to make it work On the other hand, if the base damage stats are too low (base and/or spellpower scaling), then 1. There would be no point in picking this as part of a warrior build 2. picking this as part of pure mage build, even with poor base and great spellpower scaling would still be an iffy proposition because you have 2 levels that you will probably never use (unless you are playing some kind of gimmicky warlockery based build, which is A-ok in my book, but probably not what you wanted this tree to be) Most importantly, I don't like those two levels because they don't really exploit the power of their respective concepts to the fullest (within the context of this tree). "They live inside you" is interesting, but should at the very least not be a chance based proc to make it "mage friendly". An "acceptable" risk for a mage would be to tank one hit, apply the debuff, then port away while the enemies die an atrocious death. Having to tank a possible FOUR hits for a proc is too much to ask of ANY mage at ANY level. As for "Hive Blind" - well like I said, the pun is nice, but "Hive Mind" (e.g. a "mind control" nuke that can charm an enemy that has been debuffed by other Bees effect) would have been equally topical and fun.
That input is very much appreciated. I hear what you are saying, I suppose it's starting to show that this is a first time attempt. I'm going to take a bit of time to think about how I can focus everything, but for now I've tweaked They Live Inside and Hive Blind (the latter not so much) based on your suggestions. They Live Inside is now a buff with 100% chance of casting Thaumite Infection. After you put it into perspective, this certainly feels more viable. I haven't really played around with Thaumites before, but I feet they stayed in line with the skill as they provide DoT and (less importantly) potential zoo clearing aid. Hive Blind...Well, maybe this needs to be revamped, I've added a 1mana per turn upkeep and taken away the extra resistance. I intended it to synergize with They Live Inside while providing something to flesh out the line before the capstone. I enjoy your idea of Hive Mind, while I was proud of the pun, it could be a good option. I don't know how I would code it to only trigger if the enemy has the bees DoT, though. Could I ask for some advice on this?
Ah, my apologies. I am still new to modding Dredmor. What would be the proper tag to look for in this case then? EDIT: Actually, what I had in mind was putting a dummy (de)buff on the target, which then triggers a spell which does the requirebuffontrigger check. Would this not work either...?
Just a quick mention - I'm using what I presume is the latest version of this from the Steam workshop, and when I Inappropriately Use Space Bees on something there's no debuff icon as there usually is. Until I came here and read the thread, I had no idea it was a DoT effect. If you can find a way to make an icon show up on afflicted monsters I think that would help the usability of it. Unless you want it to be mysterious and people to have to figure it out
Hmm, righto! The <effect type="dot"> tag doesn't actually put an icon on the monster. I'll see if I can code a dummy debuff or something this afternoon. Thanks for the feedback.
