@ComradeRoost Things get accomplished by talking about them in a rational and thoughtful manner, and suggesting potential alternatives. Repeating important issues is like voting on those issues. Things do not get accomplished by shutting-up about them.
Such is true, and I respect the passive agressive quoting on my poorly chosen words in the previous paragraph. However, Mulling over an issue such as how much lay-lines suck by para-phraseing serveral posts doesn't do much for someone trying to learn about assination. If the skill changes in some way to make in more useable, by all means, tell me all about it, but having it dominate and be progressively restated stagniates the converstaion, and denies other, more usefull, information to come to light.
@ComradeRoost I appreciate your respect, but it was less passive aggressive and more haughty. The topic of this thread is 'Useless Skills', so it is only natural that the pros and cons of a skill be debated in this thread to determine if they are indeed useless (whether literally or by comparison). If you would like a thread about the best ways to use a given skill then feel free to create such a thread and we will do our best to accomodate you.
I have to say that Ley Walker is the most useless skill in the game. I ran the math on it and it just doesn't make sense. No matter what, mana regeneration caps at 1 mana per turn anyway, which means that even if you cap it out it'll take you a couple hundred turns to regen all your mana towards the end of the game. Regen is gimpy compared to the power of Blood Magic, being able to pull in 4 mana from every kill is stronger than even the most regen you could possibly get... Which Ley Walker won't even give you on its own. Magic Training gives you a significant bonus to your magic power, which makes spells cost less, which is way better than having a little more regen, since it will actually matter over the course of a single combat, whereas regen won't. Caster support skills go Blood Magic > Magic Training > Ley Walker. So you could get Ley Walker if you already had both of the others, but there's almost no situation where you wouldn't be better off with Burglary or Archaeology which are good for everyone, or Alchemy or Fungal arts for waaaaaay better mana restoration than the piddling amount of regen you get from Ley Walker. If Ley Walker actually let you break the 1 mana per turn regen cap, it'd be useful, but that's the only way a mana regen skill could ever really matter with the way the mechanics of this game work. Every other skill actually has it's good points, but Ley Walker is genuinely useless, because regen in general is useless due to the way it's capped.
Gamma isn't working to better your case. All I'm stating is that read the thread before regurgitating the same opinion on the subject and restating it with the same reasons, and the bring up some other skills, and while yes I'm sure it's hauty, under the circumstances I figured it had to be aggressive or passive aggressive, but in anycase, you've only helped to break up the monotony of this paticular thread, and in this, I thank you. In anycase, is smithing really any worse for a warrior class than tinkering or alchemy?
Perhaps the reason why people are mentioning the same skills is because these are the skills that are considered useless, and others are considered to have their uses? In any case there are skills that have been suggested as useless which some think otherwise. The only skill that's consistently agreed as useless so far is Ley Walker, and for good reason. It seems like your main complaint is that we aren't discussing other skills for the benefit of people who wish to know more about those skills? Well, for starters, you can't voice an opinion if you don't actually hold that opinion, so if no one thinks Assassination sucks then no one is going to voice it. Secondly, if someone does want to know whether X sucks, they could just ask and then we'll start talking about that, no? The reason why this thread seems "stagnated" as you put it is likely because no one with a different opinion has appeared on the scene. If you have a different opinion, why not voice it?
@ComradeRoost The larger the number of people who come online and regurgitate the same opinion, the more likely the developers are to assume that opinion has some merit worth looking into. Regurgitation actually aids our case. Smithing is a curious skill that offers tremendous benefits in the early game and almost no benefits in the late game. It only takes a few pieces of ore to construct armor and weapons that completely blow away Level 1 and Level 2. For this reason the skill is useful for people who have a lot of trouble staying alive early on. I can also see it as an option for any build that does not become very powerful until later in the game. For example, a friend of mine wanted to play a mage but hated the early game struggle. He created a character that focused on smithing at first and gained levels very quickly. About the time he got to the 4th Floor he was ready to take off his Aluminum Armor, put on the mage gear he had been stockpiling, and blow everything away. The big problem with Smithing is that it becomes almost useless once you have a couple of core items like Aluminum Armor. That is not the fault of the skill itself, just the variety of crafting recipes currently available.
The main problem with Smithing is that it produces nothing consumable. Once you've crafted a full set of steel weaponry and a pair of Rings of Iron Thorns (crafted armor is still worse than even mildly rare drops in the first few levels, though the Aluminum Boots and Plastic Platemail are pretty good if you can pull them off), you've pretty much exhausted Smithing's bounty. All it's good for after that are the passive Burliness and Trap Affinity bonuses. Now, if you could (say) use Smithing to provide your equipment with some temporary buffs that scaled with Burliness (the stronger you are, the deeper you can etch runes ) and the material used, then that would be useful in the later game. As it is, all Smithing is good for is nearly guaranteeing yourself some good equipment.
I think you don't realize you can actually craft the strongest armor in the game(http://www.dredmorwiki.com/wiki/Embossed_Serpentine_Platemail) I also craft 2 Rings of Thorns, and 2 Flails of Pleiades (http://www.dredmorwiki.com/wiki/Flail_of_Pleiades) witch for some reason start with lots of random bonus stats(once had one I could sell for 42k even before using it on Anvil of Krong) usually i can get about 2/3 of those before 5th floor, craftable swords and axes are quite weak compared to those aluminum helm/runed iron hjalmr before i can find anything better and all non-dodge boots are kinda crappy so going for aluminum ones is not the worst choice you can even craft yourself an emerald amulet. I'm full about 3rd/4th floor and for the most part of the game I find myself using mostly self crafted items, its also a great way to get cash each 5 iron ingots=knightly sword sold for 4k and 6 iron ingots= katana for 5k and many items can be upgraded very cheaply for huge boost in value. My main problem with crafting now it the amount of ingots that are in the game, tin ingot is only used for useless bucket and creating bronze, electrum ingot is used ONLY for Chalcoelectronic Ring, and plastic is useful only for plastic platemail.
I don't like the crafting skills. They seem too unreliable, you can't depend on actually finding the particular recipes you want or certain ingredients. It means more clutter in your inventory for the chance to possibly make something that will in all likelihood be worse than something you'll pull from a chest or buy anyway.
Zenanon, you don't need to have found the recipe to craft an item. Since bookshelves are so rare and useful crafting recipes are even rarer, I think people don't rely on that much. Also wow, I hadn't seen the Flail of Pleiades - that thing is ridiculous. It makes me sad that the high level crafted swords are kinda weirdly debuffed; the Katana and the Knight's Sword only gain like two points of damage on their predecessors, but they both lose three points of accuracy.
I'm beginning to change my mind about Alchemy after maxing it out, solely for the distilling boost. For just one Apple or Pear you can distill 9 Brandy bottles (25 mp each). The same applies to almost all the alcoholic beverages.
And if you have enough Aluminium, you can transform those beverages into even more Aqua Vitae and make even more Mana Potions... With high level Alchemy, the three Wizarding skills seem almost superfluous.
What I've seen mostly in the topic is people saying that this or that skill is useless, shortly followed by someone saying it's not. The only skill that this hasn't been said of is Ley Walker. I am of the opinion that the ranged attack skills are both pathetic in the lack of levels (even Unarmed gets 5 levels, and both the ranged attack skills get 2), and in the boost they get. I thought for a short time that although it was my favorite, the Assassination skill was kinda pathetic, but then I remembered it's +7 crit and 3 random special attack procs.
The issue with ranged for me is the difficulty of getting enough ammo. If crossbows could always shoot wooden bolts, then it'd be a lot better. Or a higher rate of ammo recycling...
If you just only damage stuff with a crossbow, you are going to have a tough time. I suggest getting a build with fungal + tinkering. The slime you get at level 2 can help you all through the 1st 2 floors. That's enough time to get tinkering up to level 5. After that you shouldn't have bolt problems. The only problem you will have is an inventory one.
@Lactose You know, I just ran a pure rogue through the game and even with Tinker 5 I was still trying to conserve my ammo for fear of running out. I think a part of the stress is that monsters are absolutely infinite and ammo is completely finite. Taking too long and/or being OCD and full clearing levels could easily lead to shortages if the RNG is feeling stingy.
Well there are ammo vending machines to help you out if you need emergency ammo (and have the zorkmids).
Maybe the Diggle Vending Machine Repairman will replenish them over time? =D (Provided you don't slaughter him mercilessly.)
