There's no way Archaeology is currently working as intended

I haven't seen a thread about this yet, but if there is, I apologize.

So, I just beat Dwarven Moderation with Permadeath on, which is not noteworthy by itself. What is, however, is how ludicrously trivial it was simply by abusing archaeology.

Currently, when you use the ability "This Translation is All Wrong!" on a weapon, you have a chance to add damage to said weapon. This chance seems to go up based on how many Krong anvils you've used on the weapon.

The catch: There is no chance of losing damage by using TTiAW.

What this means is that by spamming the ability on a weapon that has seen a few Krongs, your weapon quickly becomes game-breakingly overpowered.

On my last playthrough, on the bottom floor, I was doing an average of 550 damage per hit (dual-wielding swords). Everything died in one hit... even if they blocked. Dredmor himself died in one turn. Unfortunately, I'm unable to see how much damage each sword currently does, as when you've stacked 12 or 13 of the 16 damage types on one weapon, it becomes impossible to see the numbers anymore.

Anyways, I recommend people give it a try, before it gets hotfixed. Also, if you use swords, be sure to abuse one of the pork swords for the extra 10 HP, it really helps when Arch Diggles decide to counter you.

 

Sounds like a bug. Damage can go up or down when I use TTiAW

 

Bug, I've never seen this happen. No wonder people think the skill is OP.

 

Interesting. I've done it on multiple playthroughs now with no variation.

Perhaps it's kit-related? I run:

Swords
Dual Wield
Dodge
Archaeology
Vampirism
Fungal Mastery
Berserking

I can't think of why any of those skills would interact with archaeology, but who knows?

 

I've used Archaeology hundreds of times and I have never seen it generate additional damage out of thin air. I HAVE seen it remove negative enhancements placed by a Displeased Krong or Corruption Monsters/Traps which means you can get infinite improvements just by letting yourself be corrupted over and over again.

 

Actually I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I am ridiculously unlucky, but I've been having TTiAW removing extra enhancements from my items, reverting them to the standard stats of the items, but still keeping unique item names on my gear. Although it's nothing another roll can't fix, it's happened to me at least 4-5 times already. Maybe I'm just really unlucky.

 

Talk about unlucky I've never had the skill give me good stats period and this is the second full run I've taken it and use it constantly, it either won't re-roll my artifacts mods, or it'll just cycle any negative ones it has or it'll just revert back to original state. No clue how people are making these uber haxxor weapons.

 

Sounds like you found a bug. Never ever seen that happen. The only thing it can do is change the other stats on the item to damage stats, potentially. Never create extra stats out of thin air though. And with enough time, anything can be overpowered.

EDIT: Just replicated your fun bug, haha http://i.imgur.com/Zw4fC.png

Once you get enough stat slots on the weapon from anvils, you reach a critical mass to where you never "lose" slots and can just keep using TTiAW a bunch until it reaches god status. Granted it looked ridiculous even before I used TTiAW, so that helps.

 

Crazy, lol.

 

I've used that skill many times. The modifiers always add to the same thing before and after translation (sometimes it adds a -1 to something and a +1 to something else, but always in balance).

But then, I use it on my fedora and only my fedora. It must be a bug specific to weapons.

 

Y'know, looking at that weapon - how the hell are resists supposed to be viable when there's that many damage types? And armor only stops two of those.

 

I can now confirm that this bug exists on weapons at least. It requires a large number of mods from Krong Anvils before it starts happening, which is why my previous attempts to replicate this bug failed.

 

Then it's not so much a bug, but a reward for being persistent.

 

Here's a fun picture of the result of said bug http://i.imgur.com/YdmrF.png

 

Cool. So much want.

 

And this is what happens when you crit. http://i.imgur.com/uDPYc.png

 

Uh, I just tested this. You don't need large amounts of attributes on the weapon, you just need patience. Just find a weapon and TTiAW it over and over and over and over again. You will slowly gain more and more +damage.

I just rolled a dual sword user and was doing 70 damage a hit just barely after reaching the second dungeon level. It takes about 20-30 minutes of grinding to hit that level of +damage on your weapons.

 

Oh, and it doesn't seem to work on armor. I wasn't able to achieve the same effect on gear no matter how many times I used TTiAW.

 

I noticed it didn't work on armor as well. I never tried it with a fresh weapon to test either, only one that was heavily anvil'd.

 

It takes a while on a fresh weapon, but eventually you'll get + and - attributes that don't increase the total score of the item. And then the -attributes will get rolled into damage.

It goes a lot faster with a few attributes already on the item. But it can be done with just a single attribute on the item.