Quick overview of 1.06 Beta

Infinitely is a strong word. You can solve a lot of problems with positioning considering the AI isn't going to swarm you if you are a screen or 2 away. I beat a game using pryrokenisis as my main damage spell. It took 4 casts to kill most things on DL 10 vs 2 casts of say artic vortex. But this made little difference since it was still possible to never take melee damage.

I do think the game is too far geared towards boring DoT spells for mages. Math, necro, and viking all primarily rely on dots. The other primary damage spells that are viable are few and far between. So it will be interesting to see how the changes effect fleshcrafting.

 

How about we not nerf Vamprism, because really, WTH is the point of Vamprism if you can't live long enough to use it.
Either make it flat based on the amount of damage you do with a bare minimum, making it no longer require your melee user to suddenly become an Archmage in order to use it reliably.
Also, Vampires are not Mages. 99.99% of the time.
So, basically, make it more melee based than mage based.
Vampires don't have amazing magic powers beyond basic mind control and yes, shapeshifting. That's the extent.

They're mostly known for extreme strength and power far beyond mortal men. Not channelers of the mystic arts.
So, please, please, make Vamprism not based on magic power, making melee builds useful for once in this game.
Anything to nerf the dual-staff only success way.

Having to change melee into ranged halfway through the game is not a good balance design.
At the moment, most monster damage in the later half of this game need to be nerfed badly, or set to scale on difficulty, or set to do more damage to mages, so melee users can actually be useful.

 

If you haven't read the "After further review, melee still sucks" thread, lemme just summarize it for you. Melee is entirely viable, but you have to have a solid defense. That means either piling on massive absorb and piercing resist (which nukes your magic power) or getting very high block/counter/dodge so you don't actually get hit as much. The former case can get melee damage from monsters down far enough that Vampirism is still able to keep up even when you have only 0 magic power and thus are draining only 3HP/hit. Regardless, Vampirism is not a substitute for food; it means that most fights will not require healing afterwards, but you should still have a backup plan (alchemy, psionics, fungal arts, wand lore) for when the fight's over and you're out half your HP.

Put another way, the characters that need Vampirism to scale are the ones who aren't wearing heavy armor; they're the same ones who will have higher magic power. So the system works.

 

Vampirism shouldn't be your ONLY source of life. It's not going to keep up past floor 7. You should have an escape and another source in case of emergency.

That doesn't make vampirism bad.

 

Okay, so, how am I going to mass enough absorb and piercing resist that Arch Diggles don't do 20+ damage to me?
Yes, I've run a melee character only up to level 7 before. But I have never once gotten more than 14 to 15 AA on my character.
So, no, Melee is not viable in this game except to the best players ever.
I'm playing on Elvish Easy. I shouldn't have to be forced to change every tiny little detail of how I play this game and my character, just to survive past floor 5.
That is bad game balancing.

I just want Vamprism to be adjusted to not require magic power at such an extreme way. Vampires using magic is a little silly. When I can beat up a cyberdemon in melee easier than my character against monsters past Level 4, there's something wrong here.

I should not be forced into a lame dual-staff build just to be able to hurt things. I hate magic in games. It's always stupidly overpowered or useless. I am not going to change from being a melee character to forcing myself to use magic.
I like this game, it's fun, but it's really hard to keep a melee vampire alive long in it.
I always play with the same skill set. I am not getting rid of Archaelogy or Smithing for anything else. Alchemy should not be forced on a player.
I really don't understand why I have trouble in the later stages. Melee vampires who drain life should not have problems hitting and absorbing life essence from their enemies. EVER. That is totally opposite of how vampires work.

 

I was getting hit for 5 damage from Archdiggles on Dwarven with my melee build. Here are details:

http://www.gaslampgames.com/communi...review-melee-still-sucks.960/page-3#post-8546
http://www.gaslampgames.com/communi...review-melee-still-sucks.960/page-3#post-8549

Melee gets more difficult as the game progresses, but I find this is typical in melee vs magic. I like the power curve.

 

Exactly. I don't disagree that melee could use a bit of beefing up compared with some magic builds. But this is actually a tradition since v1.0 of D&D, where mages start out as fragile as tissue paper, then wind up as Gods, whereas fighters start out as the perfect grunt, but then wind up as dragon fodder.

I won't argue that this is a good thing because I don't actually belive that it is. But it IS typically how such games end up 'balanced', where two builds may not be the same at every level, but everything balances out in the long run (well, not quite, but sort of if you think the way that Gary Gygax did).

Personally, I think that meleers should have the possibility of beefing up their defenses a bit higher, but that it shouldn't be a far-gone conclusion that you will be successful in doing so. And there should always be the risk of dying, either from a bad decision or horrible luck, regardless of your build and equipment (you shouldn't reach God-mode simply because you got lucky).

I want GR to be tough to win, regardless of your build, but I also don't want pure melees to shoulder the whole brunt of that difficulty. And it would be nice if the number of viable builds for that to be true would be wider.

That said, a lot of doing that will have to do with changing the nature of the enemies, adding more ranged attacks, and so on, to force the mages to have to take some risks as well.

 

Depends on your build.

Arch Diggles deal 25 Slashing and 20 piercing damage in 1.05. This has been nerfed down to 16 piercing in 1.06.

All builds should have at least:

Code:

Embossed Serpentine Platemail = 11 AA + 6 PR
Sir Albrecht's Helm = 6 AA + 2 PR
Rocket Boots = 4 AA + 2 PR

Total = 21 AA + 10 PR

That leaves you taking 14 damage (4 slashing, 10 piercing). At this point your skills can further reduce the damage:

Code:

Master of Arms = 3 AA + 3 PR
Shield Bearer = 1AA + 2 PR
Total = 4 AA + 5 PR

If you maxed both you'd be down to 5 piercing damage (or be immune to Arch Diggles in 1.06). This is ignoring the various buffs that both skills have to further increase your defenses. This is just your baseline defense - the bulk of your defense will be in the form of Block and Counter.

With the above equipment and skills you can easily get your block into the high 70's and even reach 110% block chance if you're using dual shields. To maximise counter your best bet is to dual wield swords: 8 * 2 + 10 = 26 counter. You can get another 16 counter from two Rings of Iron Thorns, leaving you with 42% chance to counter.

 

Uh, if you could just play however you want and win regardless this game would be silly. You can't pass 14 to 15 AA? I had a character up to 37 AA + 22 piercing resist. Arch-Diggles hit me for 0 damage unless they crit, and if they crit they hit me for 5 damage.

Try taking smithing, master of arms, shield bearer, and using a shield.

What would be bad balancing would be to balance the game around the lowest common demonenator like yourself. This is a roguelike. It should be painfully hard. You can turn off permadeath and brute force yourway through the game on elvish easy mode.

This game should take several attempts + learning the game mechanics to beat. You shouldn't be able to just roll whatever and faceroll through the game. Because if you could, this game would be very boring.

 

One question I have is are they making the other melee skills comparable to swords but different enough to warrant taking one over the other? I've always been a crusher freak so I love the mace skill. Am I going to be represented as the tank that I am?

 

The elvish -> GR gap should increase. For me the challenge should remain with GR/PD while elvish should be easy.

I don't know why some people feel that "everyone" must be playing this like a rogue like. Difficulty should not be forced on those who choose easy mode. The GR ppl are complaining that everything is OP and game is too easy, the elvish are complaining it's too hard. It seems obvious to me that the solution that satisfy both side is to widen the gap with damage scaling (elf 90%/dwarf 100%/GR 110%).

 

Alright just did a pure Fleshsmithing run and I've completely changed my mind about the skill. Both Corpus Burst and Miasmatic Putrefaction decimate Monster Zoos due to stacking poison clouds. Fleshbore stacks and is more than capable for on-the-go single target killing. Knit Tissue stacks and works fine for healing even without being affected by magic power. Died on DL10 because I was one-hit killed from 80 hp by my own stacked poison cloud.

Haven't steam-trained through the game like that since the old Promethean.

 

Thank you, 123stw, It's nice to know some people still know how this game is supposed to be.

Apparently, you don't know how to be nice. I'll try to be nice regardless.
A. This is a roguelike in spirit. You can't call it a roguelike if it has graphics.
B. Even if it was a full roguelike, ADOM is fun compared to this. I got to the Tower of Eternal Flames once. Yeah me. Without cheating...anyway. Yes, you can cheat even in ADOM.
C. You shouldn't need the best damn gear in the game to be able to have a chance at beating it. That is really really bad balancing. Look at it this way, not everyone in Diablo II needs the Hellfire Torch + Annulus + 12 skill charms + Barb shouts maxed + frenzy spam + fanatism + Conviction + Vegeneance to beat Hell Baal.
This game should learn something from Diablo II. All chars should be viable.
D.Also, I play on Elvish Easy. Try to read my post fully. And no, you can't brute force yourself on Elvish Easy.
Honestly, it's like people forgot how to be nice since I first joined this forum. How many people are going to be rude to me?
E.This game is not supposed to be brutally hard on Elvish Easy. I struggle to get good gear in this game. Damnit. Stop treating me like someone who hasn't played Roguelikes since 1997.
F. Angband has a nice built in wizard/Debug/cheat option mode. For people who want to play a game and relax, kill things for fun. I'm not advocating this game get the same. I'm just saying, Elvish Easy should be easier. Stop thinking everyone only plays on Going Rogue. Sheesh.

 

Easy should be easy. Hard should be ADOM. That's my opinion on the matter.

 

IF you play the game on GR, then you shouldn't complain that other difficulties are too easy. If you play on Elvish and think Elvish is too hard, then you have every right to complain. It's as simple as that. What is SUPPOSED to be, that people are forgetting, is the part where DoD is a GAME and Games are supposed to be fun. It may not be the same game on every difficulty level and that's the way it should be. Why have different difficulty levels otherwise? If it's fun for you at your selected difficulty level, well then good for you. Don't tell other people what THEY should think is fun.

 

No one is actually talking about patch changes anymore, but whatever =p

I agree, Elvishly Easy, well, isn't. It's okay later on once you have your skills and damage output pumped up - at that point, the monster's lesser HP pools are fairly noticeable. But it's still way too easy for a newly minted Eyebrows to die a horrible death on Floor one in "Easy Mode", even if you're an experienced player. I know this firsthand, I lost 2 characters with solid builds while going for the "Easy/Permadeath" achievements. Maybe find a way to insert an artificial damage penalty to monsters on Floors 1 and 2, if nothing else, to help keep things like Floor 1 Deths or Enraged Diggles from being Instant Eyebrow Slayers, even on Easy?

 

I'm nice. Honest.
Also, I agree with the last three posters above. Well, above the Admin anyway.
I do enjoy this game, but I'm not happy with some weird ideas of game design.