If you think about it... the degree of balance in this game is amazing

I demand an apology for doubting my ability to know things that I didn't actually know at the time of making the post. Hah!

 

That was what I started to do yesterday before anyone repiled... I wonder if we can figure the targeting scheme out befor null shares wisdom

If offered, accepted - I actually suspected / knew for sure that some of this stuff couldn't be done except by devs, which is why I was sitting around waiting for an official expansion and being a sad panda. Well that, and because I've seen discussions about such things get killed on ideological grounds before any of the pro modders got interested enough - and they need very interedsted modders to get a classy and elegent solution because so much stuff is hardcoded.

EDIT:

Couldn't the whole IBIAM effect be recreated using a custom spell with the properties of consuming a artifact (think I saw a handle for that one) and giving the player XP (also saw one). The problem would be making the XP gain, er, don't know the term, but dynamic comes to mind (calculated from the worth of the artifact)?

Especially in the case of having the thing on the floor and pulling say a lever or something?

 

It would have to simply destroy the item and give you a set amount of experience because they haven't given us a way to set our own experience gain for it that would be scalable.
Unless you asked Nicholas about it; maybe it would cause him to add it to the next patch.

 

Hmmm, woldn't want to badger them, but maybe other people would like to have that ability for modding purposes.

In the meantime I'll see what I could do with wands, and look into the bankster debuffs for scaling puposes, as I'm thinking of adding one of them as a debuff penalty for using the effect

 

So is archaeology usable without IBiaM? Or is that like the only reason to take the build? Because I've never been a huge fan of it.

 

Well you do get the fedora, some trap sense, and the only sensible mechanism of interacting with Krong altars, otherwise it's just a fun, flavorufull skill tree. Depends on what you pick your skills for.

 

So beyond that one skill, it's more or less useless then?

 

Depends on how you look at it, really - if you don't pick it up, Krong altars are more or less useless. Compared to what?

 

I'm pretty sure the IBIAM effect as a whole (including the xp scaling) is a single callable XML trigger. That said, I'm posting from my Kindle w/o the DBs in front of me, so I could well he wrong.

 

It is, but it works in such a way that it requires the item to be in your inventory, and is subject to all the limitations which you were talking about, unless I'm missing something.

Oh well, untill the dev's decide to give us a way to add expressions and actual coding options to how variables are calculated, if the decide to do so at all, the only way to make a custom IBIAM shrine is the one Kazeto suggested. Allthough I'm not sure it requires fiddling with the core files, and could actually be made as a smooth enough easily ignoreable part of anyones dungeon.

So by taking this ironic route, I hope that me ending up with having to use Kazeto's solution, and him ending up with me using his solution, will be enough to end the whole sorry affair on a happy note. Some pointers in the actuall mod thread I might need, though, and if this thing works, I'll upload it to the workshop after a bit of testing, and whip up a skill mod I've been secretly wanting to make for a while now. Separate from this one - the reason is this one is something really anyone can use in his or her game, the other one will be more of a matter of taste.

The skills on that one will include The Alienist (a wizard who starts out with a horadric cube, has personal issues with slimes and "other" creatures and ends up discovering a horrible secret about his ancestry), the Troll (a warrior who turns his buffs into class specific debuffs and gives them to monsters on sucessfull dodges, blocks and counters, gets vulnerable to fire but has an "epic win" proc rate and capps out by "wining the intratubes"), and The Trappist (a crafty rogue who can turn traps into better traps, can push traps around, put traps onto arrows and grind traps into cheeze - all using class specific recipies so I don't muddle up the recipie pool). Not bundling that one with the custom shrine patch material, though

 

Come to think of it, would it be possible to use an altar like the ones created by Roguish Renovation? The Obsidia Shrines, if you give them the right item, they spawn an item or exp.

 

If it works like that then whoever made them had figured this whole thing out - maybe. Will look into it, ty.

 

Glad to see you came around to the mod side. Looking forward to this -- sounds like fun.

 

I'd imagine you could make a new shrine per floor.

 

It is usable without it. But it is still a large part of the skill tree, so unless you want the ability to re-roll artefacts at will (which can be useful, and would be more useful if rewards for quests and monster zoos were slightly more adequate) and double the amount of anvils (via recharging them), it is usually better to get some other skill tree if you aren't going to use this feature.

Though the Charlemagne throw can be useful, but if that's all you want from it then going for Psionics is a better idea (usually).

Well, you also have Null's suggestion from your other thread (which is likely much better than mine, since his will likely be easier to write and much more elegant) but either way I wish you good luck, and I'll try to be helpful if you'll have any questions.

 

Like I said, you could just make a new room for every floor, and have XP suitable for said floor.

 

Or just put it in the pocket dimension?

 

Pocket dimension would mean the same XP for every artifact. Floor-by-floor rooms are better, but not perfect, but seemingly the best we have at the moment.

 

If it was in the pocket dimension, couldn't you just check the player level instead? Do something like 10 or 7% experience required for the current level?

 

Not really. There just aren't any hooks for that. We can either give the player a set amount of experience points (hence special shrines for every dungeon floor), or use the original function which doesn't really allow for any input.