Ok, so I've been thoroughly playtesting my rather small mod, and while I was at it I was making notes on stuff I might like on a bunch of skills I'm going to be making next. Since this included a few rather thorough playthroughs I also took a bunch of notes on stuff which probably needs attention, has been bugging me, I can't figure out or can be made a lot better in various ways. This is my list of suggestions, sutff I'd love to hear opinions on, and mostly suff that could be patched into the game if deemed to be a decent observation. I'll just put it all here in no particular order and arrange it into categories later. 1) Kicking down doors and hurting your foot removes ticks from, er, brittle (?) buffs. Those are allready annoying to recast, but fair, but having to recast them every time a door proves a bit stubborn is incredibly annoying and potentially very dangerous. Could me a minor fix, could be I'm being subjective. 2) Bolts of mass destruction and clockwork grappling bolts are possibly too expensive. CLARIFICATION: I'm not complaining about not being able to buy them, but about running into one as a random drop, and I seem to run into them at lvl1 quite often, means I can buy out all the interesting junk from the vending machines and keep everything else I find. This sort of made sense concernign bolts of mass destruction while they were actually strong enough to factor into fighting Dredmor, but currently they are just a micro-crownstar addendum, which kills decision making and resource management in the early game. In my opinion, ofc, but I'd suggest adjusting either the spawn rate or the price tag. Clockwork bolts also have a big discrepancy between actual usefullness and the money they are worth. They ARE usefull and all that, but a stack or two are worth way too much money, at least on lower difficulties. Small tweak needed probably, if any. 3) Wandcrafting, in my opinion has a bit of an "all over the place" problem with crafting components. CLARIFICATION: The 2 wands you can craft at lvl 1 are either too good to be easily available (bling wand), or have rather obscure crafting components (arcane wand). It ties into the "Wizards don't have good enough lvl1 spells" issue once you run out of initial wand charges. Having a few piss-easy-to-craft using booze wands at lover levels with mediocre effects (+1 elemental damage ticking buffs or something) would certanly make the tree as a whole more appealing on it's own (outside of encrusts). The discrepancy with other crafting skills is actually rather huge in the "weird and unintuitive componenrs department". 4) Booze seems underutilized compared to how often it drops. The booze and porta still seem rather dissapointing compared to what you can do with other stuff - the requirements to distill stuff require alchemy, and it has no other interaction with any other element of the game. You can only distill aqua vitae from anything, and short of Gargle Blasters booze only refreshes mana, which compares badly to the health refreshing food which is kind of usefull regardless of build, and all the cheezes and meat can be skolled at a much better rate without needing any crafting ability for an interesting minigoal. Even the press with the omlets and sandwitches are more interesting. Gems are in much of a simmilar situation, being too numerous and too all over the place, but at least you can chase certain gems. Booze upgrades into better booze which drops rather often anyway, refreshes mana and gets you drunk for the most part, and while the last thing is interesting the various stages of drunkeness last too short to be really manageable and it's quite easy to get yourself too drunk. Maybe I'm not just seeing it right. (more to come, hit me with all you got, illuimnate me on what I'm missing and being subjective about, I'd love to get the real problems into focus so they can be addressed).
6) Vegan is actually incredibly broken in a subtle way, not sure if it needs attention but... The fact that Octos, Fish paladins, Eelies and various dragons are animals removes so much of the elemental resist mongering minigame it's unbelievable. Not to mention that there is no meaningfull interaction with various Diggles which got increesingly more interesting over time. Some of this was probably unintentional, but right now, Vegan is easy mode even with no healing skills and the real penalty, not being able to heal yourself through food is rather inconsequential compared to the benefits. I suggest changing at least some of the spellcastes to "other", at least the lovecraftian ones, and keep Vegan immune to the dangerous diggle specialists. The way it is now it's like a more-than-part-time effortless Magical Law. Not to mention that immunity to Fish Paladins also means that any penalties to righteous damage resistance are simply ignoreable, and a lot of the stuff in this game penalizes those. In other words it makes you immune to monsters which could do you harm, and makes you good at killing monsters which can't really, because you're such a badass at melle. 7) The arrow system could use simple tweak without significantly altering the way people do stuff. Maybe. Thing is, I don't mind allocating inventory space to different and interesting arrows, but if I don't really care about what arrows I'm using, the fact that insiginificantly different ones are taking up space when I'd be happy with any kind (their damage mostly comes from the crossobws for many people) is bugging me so much. I'd add in a crafting mechanism that'd let me transmute any of them into wooden bolts if it was in any way possible. Or plastic ones. Or ones which did 0 damage on it's own, irreversibly, just so I don't have to handle millions of different ones when I just want to have something to pelt enemies with while conserving softballs. Could be it's important for things to remain the way they are, but I'd love to hear why exactly (could be several reasons) this isn't possible allready and how could I help with getting it implemented. 8) The 1 emerald gold ring could really be a component for the 3 emerald gold ring. So you could build into it, and not have to chase 3 more emeralds. Or hold off on building a small emerald ring untill you can build the big one, because you might be stuck with no emeralds when you do. Probably. 9) The piratical cutlass seems to be identical to the razor swords, except strictly inferior in that it doesn't craft into better stuff. And I'm finding the razor swords much earlier left and right. Wasted flavour right there, I mean, the razor swords joke(s) are hilarious, but the cutlass is just... Meh? Does it have a secret proc or something? 10) Quoting Bergstrom from the spin-off thread: Specific items that need tweaking: Asgardian Stormhammer - Underpriced. If there's one in an early shop, you can afford it by selling surprisingly little junk, and then you one-shot everything for the next 5 floors or so. Mace of Windu - Underpriced. Ditto. There should be a minimum price for weapons, based on damage. BMD - Overpriced. Never worth buying, but if you find one in an archery range, you can trade it to Brax for way better things. Clockwork Grappling Bolt - Overpriced Skull Bolt - Overpriced Fabulous Rogue Boots - Need a stat or proc boost to make them actually better than the Black Velvet Boots. 11) I've been getting +20 Righteous crossbow drops with alarming frequency on floor 10. If i'm not going rogue this is very annoying as that one item can kill the boss and makes my entire playthrough up to that point rather pointless . Pure dumb "luck" or can it be tweaked?
Became a separate thread, for getting involved check here 5) The entire armor system didn't seem to follow the bigger overall changes that happened to the game and is in dire need of revision Uhhh, big one here, but essentially, a couple of things led to the situation that armor (head, chest, pants and boots) in the core game are very problematic and samey compared to other types of loot and it's actually causeing problems in other places, like gish builds and skill power creep. I'm not bullshiting here, I gave it a lot of thought, here's the deal (I ought to mage a big presentation with tables, diagrams and all that to showcase this as much as it deservs). Problem no.1 Weapons and shields started out blandish, are still rather blandish, but weapons have skill trees (such as they are) and shields got huge variety boosts in orbs and tomes allong the development of the game. Armor never really got there, because the stat bonuses that differentiated playstyles got tied to weapon and defense skills. So now there is a million pieces of armor with different artworks and names which either feel sameish, strictly better / worse at buffing and nerfing the exact same things or support different playstyles (block, dodge, counter, whatever) but stop scaling the deeper in the 1-10 level range you go at some point. Or are one-tim non-upgradeable drops. Problem no.2 Most armor follows the exact same formula of nerfing the universaly usefull nimbleness, spellpower and mana regen. The nibleness makes sense on heavy stuff, but only totaly warrior types don't really care about it because it affects dodge and enemy dodge reduction. Mana regen is absolutely necessary to anyone using mana hungry buffs which are essential to melleing mages, and spellpower is now necessary to too many folks, which makes it a really bad thing to universally penalize for all armors between cloth and heavy plate. This makes the armored robes which don't penalize anything way too good, and too much stuff with components and progression compare badly to all but the specific stuff. Problem no.3 All the armor that is made "useless" by the state of affairs we are in has crafting components and short of level one, stuff that isn't really specific (like silver shields), or really optimal (like the aluminum brestplate once you encrust it) is something noone really has a use for. I'm using bronze for the shield encrust, but there are a million bronze things I'd never have a reason for using outside of lvl 1 simply becuase it's so generic. Problem no.4 If the stances showe anything it's that people would probably use armors which catered to specific protection while penalizing other types of protection. Leather and roguey armor simply stopps appearing after a very early point short of lvl-specific drops like parachute pants, and we have a screwy situation where 6* boots like Dandy black velvet ones are probably strictly superior to the 10* boots which only give 4 nimbleness. The entirety of swasbucling gear can be got really early, and then you either end up giving up the playstyle in favor of chasing "most EDR and block" random drops or stick with what you got early and that it. Problem no.X All of this is pushing towards really extreme skill builds with the necessity for rushing capstones - you need that 100 counter asap, you need that tenebrous rift asap, you need max mana regen asap - too much of this stuff is coming from skills and the game gives you way too much vendor trash for any build you go for (stuff you specificaly don't need + stuff anyone in particular doesn't need). "You'll probably end up replacing it with clockwork gear / very specific obvious endgame stuff anyway so why bother with it too much - just get your bonuses from skills", seems to be the designated philosophy for armor, and it sucks about as much as the reverse being true for weapons... Problem no.X+1 I could go on and on. Really. SOLUTION: I don't think the solution would be to add more items via mods, because the pool is allready cluttered with so much truly useless junk, it's crafting components and recipies. Stuff needs more mechanics-related identity and particular playstyle support in the core game, and the armor pool warrants a thorough Essence-like revision. Bronze needs a place in the game, Iron needs to make sense beyond being a poor man's steel (maybe), tribal needs a meaning, viking needs a meaning, leather needs to scale better, clockwork needs an identity beyond "top grade" so all the endgame craftables don't end up in tinkering. It's probably a lot less work than it sounds, though, and I'm willing to do most of the heavy data entry if level headed vets are willing to assist in the discussions about what holes are there, and suggest how to plug them.
Doesn't really matter what the clockwork trademark was, as long as it wasn't just - default endgame crafting, placed in tinkering regardless of item type, best generic endgame. I mean, it functions almost like a high-end-instabilityless encrust that adds damage to stuff you make from other trees right now, and such an encrust which makes the weapon significantly more powerfull than the original. With the system the way it is righ now its eating too much end game crafting/itemization space in too many ways, and also limiting flavour wise convincing penalty schemes. Not that I don't like the flavour, it's just that anythign that doesn't build up to it thematicaly pales in comparison and ends it's upgrade tree, and anythign that does build into it reqires tinkering in the end on purely flavour grounds, because in a purely steampunk setting crafting=tinkering. If we got to have both "technological progress=more damge" and "all weapon/item crafting materials / techniques / flavours since the stone age in there, but strictly inferior to early modern themed ones" it can't work the way it does now. I mean it can, it could just work better. Heck, if technology=magic by another name, who would prevent you from crafting up a really nasty elemental / bleeding jeweled machuatl or obsidian spear by using booze and jewels, or introduce modern materials to roman/greek weapons with the whole "good thing those guys never found about steel 'cuz the middle ages would've never have happened". Or if nordic weapons/armor had higher encrust potential? EDIT IN SUGGESTION = This warrants a thread of it's own, but I'd love it if anyone would point me to the mods which sort of "broke grounds" on item rebalancing. I remember a swashbuckling item kit mod and stuff. Anyone who's using mods like that, info about them would be appriciated. And as for the suggestion - giving "low tech" items benefits of encrust resistance, or "high tech items" penalties or inbuilt instabilities or such could go a long way and/or be a good place to start considerations on the subject.
I think the idea of a core item rebalance is a very good one. The only caveat is that I would ask that BERGSTROOOMMM!!!11 participate. That man has an incredible grasp on the value of resists and stats from all of his careful thought about floor-by-floor balance and identity.
Then he is a man we deffinitely need (I also checked some of his work out, and he even got a hat named after him ). I haven't yet really stirred him, except by possibly irritating him unwillingly back during the "shrines and playsyles - the political and mechanical controversy" thread, so I'm a bit shy to ask directly. But, as I've said I'd be doing the massive data entry required, and if it's all done with tact, moderation and proper insight I'm pretty sure even the dev's wouldn't be too hard to convince to pack it all up into a proper DLC. There really IS room for improvement, and since they don't have time and resources, noone's really gonna do it if we don't.
I generally agree with everything that has been said so far. One way you could diversify armor a little is if you introduced encrusts which add and , but decrease or or some other secondary stat. ? Trading roguishness for weaker spells does not seem like too bad of an option, since there are still many spells/skills which have utility regardless of how much you have. Or: significantly buff items or skills that give , while introducing a and/or penalty. Add a couple of more roguish armors mid and late game, as there are very few...perhaps you could add them to Tinkering or Alchemy (creating artificial joints, treating leather with potions, etc). Another route would be to imitate D&D and add 1 for every x number of you have (ala dexterity), and conversely decrease your if it goes down. Maybe every 7-10? While we are on the subject of D&D, however, I'd really rather not have a chance to fail spellcasts. And yes, I do think the penalties on drunkenness are a bit steep.
This is good stuff, Essence started a thread on the armors, we teamed up and are doing it right If you want in, check it out, share your insight. I quoted all this allready
pricing definately needs to be thoroughly overhauled. I feel that most of the prices for everything were pulled out of the proverbial keyster.
Ha-hah, your mod was what I was looking for for a while now but I'd forgot who exactly made it! And I just guess we value things differently now then was anticipaded with the last price changes...
