I'll lend you a hand!

Hello Gaslamp I'm a Game Designer myself, and I'm absolutely loving the game.
I'm trying to be as helpful as possible! I've read the latest patch laundry day promises, and I want to help coming up with some ideas.

"Some of the new Smithing Crafts need to be addressed."
All that crafting needs is to have a "disenchant" button. If you disenchant a crude iron mace, you get 1 iron bar (not ore, too strong!). You may also get nothing. You may get extra stuff too. The higher the stars, the better/more bars you get.

"Ley Lines should be more fun."
For starters, Ley Lines level 1 could also grant 1 mana per 5 steps walked. Not turns waited.
At level 3, it could also have a castable ability (cooldown, not mana) that leaves a trail of "magic resistance lowering" aura for 10 steps behind you. Again, steps, not turns. This way you can lay a ground where you will magically destroy your enemies.

"Up the ammo recovery rate, again."
Actually, what archery could use is a level 1 "Magic Bolt" summon, where you get 10 / 15 / 20 "Magic Bolts". These do average damage. Leave the recovery rate as is for special bolts, but give archers the chance to have their own ammo.

"Heavy Armours get piercing resistance."
The best way to deliver this is through armor mastery (Master of Arms). A high enough level could "make armor also absorb piercing attacks", as usually only heavy warriors will go for this skill.

"Deadshot is just kind of lame."
Give deadshot a level 1 skill with low cooldown that is just a normal blow that always hits. Cannot be missed, parried or dodged. At level 3 it could give a double strike skill: "You hit twice"

"Look, seriously, at every request for an auto-rest button and then try to come up with some way to use it that isn’t awful."
Treat resting as it was done in Fallout (1 & 2, not the new ones). You blink your eyes (fade to black the screen) and you may wake up to the following events:
- You are rested, but many monsters spawned near you.
- You are not fully rested (interrupted), and surrounded by monsters right next to you.
- You are rested, and nothing happened.
- You are interrupted by a single mob.

So resting would be a risk in itself: Hide in a corner or rest next to a closed door so you can easily open it and escape if you need to!

"Procs on Armour"
I was thinking of this too, but in regards to spellprocs. It could be on weapons too, not only armor. Pure "added magical damage" is not fun!
Examples: Armor that when getting hit could proc the first astrology spell. Weapons that on hit can proc a promethean fire blast. Crossbolts that could proc a viking lightning.
Diablo II taught us the fun in this!

 

I agree with most of your stuff except the resting. If resting is too risky then people will just do what they do now - keep tapping the spacebar. I think rest (with the r key say) should do what it does in other roguelikes - make you wait on the spot for 20 turns unless an enemy shows up in sight range or you take damage somehow. Resting should be disallowed if you have any potentially negative effects in place.

 

but 20 turns give you 2 hp in going rogue. And you are more than likely getting interrupted every time!

Also, PLEASE! If you make Fungal Arts less tedious, it should also be a lot less rewarding. Currently it overshadows Alchemy and many other buffs easily. And for free. Lets see:

Vampirism mushroom
Resistances mushroom
Damage mushroom
Strenght mushroom
Max HP mushroom
Magic Power mushroom
Instant Invisibility mushroom
Instant Mana recovery mushroom
Instant health + regen potion mushroom
AoE throwing balls mushroom

Yeah.. I think it's too good.

 

The usual way I see resting done in roguelikes is not as Darren mentioned (20 turns per press), but a "rest until healed or interrupted", where "interrupted" means something happens in your visual range.

 

...better idea. Implement a given skill: Nap Time

Nap Time (Rest) -> Self-buff.. puts user to sleep (heals 1 hp/mp per turn) for 20 turns. Cannot Move/Use Skills/Use Items. Being attacked ends the buff/sleep.

 

The thing with Fungal Arts is that it doesn't scale like Alchemy does: with Alchemy, a few levels into the skill and you could create a lot of potions from one set of raw ingredients, especially when it comes to health and mana potions. And even disregarding the potions component, Alchemy allows you to greatly improve alcoholic beverages and craft Magical equipment, making it an invaluable skill for Mages.

 

Embolus, while that much is true (other crafts besides potions), fungal arts gives unlimited base materials. I am at level 2 of going rogue and i have 60 "health potions" and at least 30 "buff potions" of each type of fungi. And I can also summon a pet which i can bite for vampirism regen. And soon I will have a passive on hit proc. Too many good things going for fungal!

 

I actually think bolt recovery rate is fine, its the you only can get back stuff if you kill the enemy with the bolt that makes it bad. I pretty much only kill enemies with bolts if they can kill me in 1 or 2 hits (bosses) or they damage my items in some way.

Just make it so any ammo used will have a chance to be recovered.

 

I agree that Fungal Arts needs a serious nerf.

 

I agree with Lactose that all archery recovery really needs is the recovery rates applying to all bolts fired not just the killing one. That would make strictly archers a lot more viable.

Magic bolts and stuff like that would just make low lvl bolts like plastic, iron etc. useless.

 

Well, one other thing Alchemy has over Fungal Art is that it provides a more useful passive bonus (for Mages at least) than Fungal does.

All in all though, Alchemy is very much a Mage's skill. If you're not a Mage you won't find it half as useful.

 

True on the passive bonuses, but fungal also gives +4 sagacity buff and +22 mana instant mushroom. And a pet!

Also as answer for the bolt thing: magic bolts should do minimal damage. Comparable to low tier plastic bolts maybe. Any dungeon bolt should be better. What i propose is that archers should not NEED to have a melee skill or weapon "just in case"

 

I'm loving the game, it does need more balancing of course but when I read Bakyra's suggestions many of them seem out of place or too much of a buff. Here's my breakdown, worth +2 copper ingots.

"Some of the new Smithing Crafts need to be addressed."
Not sure how disenchanting an item would result in gaining a physical item. Disenchantment would remove the magical attributes and not result in excess iron. I can't think of why you would want to disenchant an item, what am I missing?

"Ley Lines should be more fun."
Level 1 already grants +1 Mana Regeneration and is there anything in the game engine that leads you to believe that taking a step can be distinguished from a turn holding still? I can't recall that, and besides it represents the same thing, that being the passage of time. They do need to be a bit more useful though. An increase in Sagacity perhaps?

"Up the ammo recovery rate, again." I agree with previous views here, ammo recovery should be random every shot, not only on kill shots, and increased slightly. Perhaps an increase to the amount of arrows made when crafting. A "magic bolt" spell is not in sync with the non magical skill and would make it too powerful (endless supply of 'average' arrows would allow someone to bulldoze over the dungeons).

Heavy Armors with pierce buff, you nailed it.

"Deadshot is just kind of lame." An always hit skill that lasted for a few number of shots (3-5) would be cool. But, a double strike would be too much buff. An added +1 increase in critical chance at levels 2 and 3, and an increase in visual range at level 3 would be more balanced.


I think Darren Grey has more of the right idea for resting. As far as procs go, sure, why not?

 

By the way, there are already procs on weapons that literally do what you suggest, Bakyra. I've had both the astrology spell and promethean spell at the same time on a dual wield build.

 

Really Rikkard? Man, i need to survive longer! lol

JayHey, here's an answer:
By disenchanting i mean destroying the item. It could be a base item, not necesarily an artifact. The problem right now is that you depend too much on lucky spawns to get anything other than iron weapons/armor and potions other than health. I've had a run dying at dungeon level 5 where zero chalk spawned, thus prohibiting me from getting anything steel related (which are the best items that you can craft, or base for them).

Ley Lines: Yes, the engine can tell between steps and turns waited. Mayhaps you are confusing "+1 mana regeneration" with what that stat actually does. Let me explain: At roguelike diff, you regen 1 mp every 9 turns. Having +1 to mana regen does not give you an mp per turn, nor 2 per 9 turns. It lowers the turn count by 1, so you'd get 1 mp every 8 turns instead of 9.
Ley lines, at max level, gives you three turns lower (6 turns per mp). That does not feel very regenery and ley linish. My balance offers a bigger regen out of combat (moving) and no stationary bonus. So you dont stay in your place getting infinite mana casting doom on the zoo.

Archery: The archery buff to summon plastic bolts does not need to be magical. Magic Bolt was just a name. Same way burglars can procure lockpicks out of thin air, archers should be able to pull out "wooden bolts" (better name?) out of thin air.

Deashot has the same problem as leylines. All other skills in game are much more worthy leveling. The suggested double hit isnt that much better either, considering that for example the sword skill already hits twice if the enemy is in melee range.

 

Thanks for the clarifications. Yeah, disenchant threw me off, you mean a smelting button, which would work. I understand how regen works, if the game can handle movement regen then something like that sounds ok. Still don't like the archery suggestion (don't like the burglary skill giving lockpicks out of thin air either), maybe a later patch could add wood scraps or metal scraps, after breaking a barrel or locked chest for example, and then the archer or burglar can create wooden arrows or lockpicks. I don't like the non-magical "something for nothing" technique. With deadshot, I still think that buffing the already present skills would work, but an added skill level between Bullseye and Prince of the Crossbow, titled, "Rapid Fire" or Doubleshot would be fine.

 

Fungal does not provide a +4 Sagacity buff, it provides +3. There is also a potion that provides a +2 Sagacity buff. Also, Fungal's mana shroom can be converted into 9 mana potions at maximum Alchemy. As for the summons, if you are a Mage then you're likely to have a summon anyway.

 

@embolus

jesus christ, no one cares about 4 sagacity. That's only like 2 points of magic dmg increase. You know why alchemy sucks? because you need FOUR (FOURRRRR) freaken skill levels to max out alchemy. You only need ONE level in fungal arts to have around 60 of each mushroom by floor 4. That means you can place 3 levels of skills in other things. And guess what? If you place a skill into a mage skill, then you get +2 sagacity already. So 3 levels of mage skills = 6 sagacity + a ton of other stat points. And if you decide to get another level of fungal arts, then you can convert mushrooms into other mushrooms. By floor 4 of another game of mine, I was running around with 200+ mana shrooms, 100+ healing shrooms, and 100+ invisibility shrooms. By floor 4!!! It's near impossible to die with fungal arts.

and your point about creating 9 mana potiosn with 1 mana shroom at max level? does that even matter? Are you going to wait until you get max level before converting the shrooms? And how many mana shrooms do you find on each floor? Maybe 1 if you're lucky?

And you know the best part of fungal arts? I get 15k money each floor from selling all the shrooms. I'd like to see alchemy do that. And I don't have to carry around useless reagents to mix stuff.

 

@mellow If you craft a fruit staff(lv5 alchemy), and kill with it, mobs will drop 1 plum/apple/pear, which can be converted into aqua vitae via alchemy, and can be sold for a total of 1k coins per apple/pear and 350 per 2 plums in GR difficulty.

Of course, this is completely arbitrary considering there isn't a whole lot you need to spend your coins on. If you really need coins and don't want to sidetrack as a mage, you might as well get CotGR and spam that on every mob.

 

While there's no need to get angry, Fungal Arts IS a bit over the top at the moment. Maybe the seed skill could use more cooldown, and summon 1/1/2/2/3 seeds at a time.