List of balance / bug / general game improving suggestions

1) Pyro-mages are OP.

Reason for this is mostly fire trap, because the fire effect on ground STACKS. If there was a CAP to the stack amount, they would not be this crazy.


2) Archeaology is OP and unclear.

If you can reroll and add stats unlimited times...it´s just stupid. Does the item keep general level or not?


3) Add actual numbers to stats. - how are the stats effecting? (mouseover popup for stats)

Example, you have 15 spell power. How does this effect and what? +25% damage, -25% mana cost mouseover would help plenty. Apply to everything.

Also add proc chance percentages to somewhere. (mouseover on skill up / and from character screen?)

4) Anvils feel way too random. Used 7 seperate anvils, got six "displeased" and one buff. This was without archeaology. Add number to give you a general "pleased chance"?


5) Fungi-mastery is near useless compared to other skills.

-Summons are extremely weak. For example the last summon from fungi is much worse than the phoenix/mid pyromancy bird summon.

-Spawning spores and dropping them to corpses is very time consuming and boring. Make it an aura that automatically does what it says it would.


6) Unarmed. Kicking doors and taking damage, while you have maxed unarmed feels just stupid - and taking damage from it.


7) Summoned creature animations. It slows gameplay VERY much. Add an option that disables the animations or makes them +300-500% faster.


8) Possibility to teleport to a place where you cannot get out. Add some sort of divine unstuck-command.


9) Add new skills to skill trees that are very short.


10) ADD LOOT TABLES TO ENEMIES!

...I think I have seen enough 5 gold drops for a lifetime.


Thanks for the great game!

 

11) Add mouseover SELL price on items (at least in store if not global). Quickselling is very annoying, when you do not know how much you are going to get from the item.

 

12) Buff unarmed (in late game). Perhaps double effect from MELEE POWER?

 

13) Blood magic is OP. It seems to be the core of all casters. Much stronger than trained / ley.

 

easier leveling up/gaining exp. more skill points per level, you only get 1 per level, making it super difficult to choose from your skill tree that you selected. less monter spawns, theres WAY to many. sometimes you'll get a horde of monsters on the first level & die, that's not fun. for me i want to lvl, try different combo of skills, explore the dungeon, not die on the 1st lvl just cause of a horde of monsters. that's just me.

 

Or forget farming mushroom entirely and just add like a 20% chance of kill dropping random mushroom. It is less boring and less abusable at the same time.

 

It should be 20% + 20% per level in fungal.

 

Wait, did you really say fungal arts is underpowered? Fungal arts is one of the strongest skill sets in the game. Also, blood magic is fine. Ley lines is just underpowered as it's too easy to reach mana regen cap outside of those skills. Mage training is a solid skill set imo though I hear it's currently bugged.

 

1. Please please PLEASE add a hover tooltip to stat and attribute icons. A picture is not worth a thousand words.

2. When 'switch click function' is turned on in the menu, make Shift+Click pick up items in the default manner (not automatically placed in inventory). Allows me to grab stuff I don't need and put it into the Horardic Cube automatically.

3. Better yet, add an option to Skol certain types of items automatically upon pick-up, using a selector like the Autoloot selector. A Warrior doesn't need booze, for instance, and a non-Alchemy character has no use for Alchemy reagents.

4. Make windows remember their positions. Make minimap remember its size. I saw that UI scaling was a known issue, so I'm looking forward to not squinting.

5. There is a problem related to using the movement keys to attack an enemy in a doorway. Usually happens when you've just opened a door. Basically in this case, moving into an enemy makes you wait instead of attack (or attempt to use the door, or something).

6. Putting lutefisk into the Horardic Cube should give you the same number of lutefisk you put in. Related to Skoling stacks, which you already know.

7. Armour Absorption should be able to reduce damage to zero. Taking 1 damage from a Sickly Diggle when wearing Serpentine armour is like throwing a paper plane at a tower shield and expecting it to hurt the man behind it.

8. Should Anvils of Krong only give positive effects? It's very easy to cheat the system to make it so, anyway. (Save before using anvil, Ctrl+Shift+Esc and quit Dredmor, then reload the save.)

9. Should corruption from killing certain enemies be made rarer? What if I'm not adapted for ranged combat at all?

10. There's the issue of the huge slowdown in areas with many stacked decals, which I've heard they are looking at. Separate from this, the game's scrolling is also a bit jittery; it's very easy to see when you compare how smoothly the game scrolls when you're in the middle of unrevealed territory, compared to how it scrolls in fully revealed territory.

 

@Desi "7. Armour Absorption should be able to reduce damage to zero. Taking 1 damage from a Sickly Diggle when wearing Serpentine armour is like throwing a paper plane at a tower shield and expecting it to hurt the man behind it."
Piercing damage/toxic damage/etc bypasses armor.
That's why they hurt. Though, I don't recall if they do piercing or toxic.
I know 2 armor absorption blocks their slashing.

Your comparisson works, but it's more like splashing toxic waste on a person holding a tower shield, it's going to do damage to the shield and the person.
I mean, if someone fires a flamethrower at you while you're wearing armor, or even holding a tower shield, it's going to kill you. Unless you are immune/resistant to fire.
8. No reason to use Cntrl-shift-esc to cheat anvils. Kill yourself, load game, obviously only works off of Permadeath. But if you scum anvils, like I do, there's no reason to play with Permadeath on.
9. No monster gives corruption damage on killing them. It's a glitch. Has to be. Some monsters can magically hit you even though you hit them and killed them. A last death attack or something I guess.

Also, what does Skol mean? I never once heard it before. I know it's a brand of tobacco chew.

 

Yeah I was reminded of piercing damage in the other thread re. Absorption, which makes sense. I could argue about how it would be hard to penetrate higher levels of armor, but that would just complicate things unnecessarily.

Also, for save-scumming at point 8, I found that you can just Alt+F4 if you're running in windowed mode to deposit yourself back at the main menu and reload, without having to restart the entire game proper. I really think Anvils should only give positive effects since there's so few of them, but that the effects should be predetermined upon character generation to prevent scumming.

And I thought I read somewhere that certain dying enemies have the corrupt effect, but can't find it now. I did find, though, that Blobs of Corruption have a 50% chance of Corrupt Weapon on strike, which sucks, quite frankly.

And 'Skol' is from the earlier version of the Horardric Cube, which had a big 'Skol' button to make the items you placed in it turn into lutefisk instead of having it done automatically like now. You can still hear some Viking-types exclaim, "Skol!" when you use the cube, though.

 

Ah. Didn't know that about the Skol. Didn't play the versions before 1.02.
And yeah, the anvils should be always positive, with slight adjustments.

As it stands, unless you're really lucky and get the best possible setup, any item you enchant with that, is not going to be amazingly overpowered, even if you managed to get it boosts from floor 1 all the way to floor 10.

Unless I'm hellishly unlucky, and only get marginal improvements.
As for Alt-F4, didn't know that. I just die, and restart, however, I've been really lucky as of late.

 

Skål (pronounced skole) = 'cheers' in Nordic countries

 

I strongly agree with the proposal that anvils should only give positive enchantments. I think there was no need for them to give negative enchantments in the first place. It is something the player can't control - he might be lucky but he also might be unlucky.

 

I would argue that the player does have control over the anvil of krong (outside of cheating.) They have a choice on whether or not to gamble on getting a better item, or possibly a curse. On my main character every single item i have equipped has been cursed by the anvil, and to me thats perfectly okay because the game didnt force me to gamble. I chose to take the gamble because it was fun, and i because i could afford to do so. I would be bummed to see that aspect changed.

 

Personaly, I don't like that gambling mechanic. I just save my game before using an altar and reload it if I get a negative enchantment. I see no sense in not doing so.

 

I agree, changing them to be always positive would make sense. They're rare, it would prevent scumming, and even absolutely great rolls wouldn't make the game easy.
Unless there's already an XML file to edit to make the anvil even more powerful.

@Ratha You had horrible luck. Like the equivalent of getting two Royal Flushes in a row in poker.

 

I also dislike the gambling mechanic, for the same reason I dislike weapon corruption; it's inherently unfair. What I mean by fairness in video games is that whater the game uses against me, I should be able to use against the game (or at least negate). Not only is it impossible to get Krong to curse enemies, or to corrupt enemy weapons and attacks, but there's also no way to negate either of these effects, whether it be by repairing the weapon with Smithing, or sacrificing 200 lutefisk at a statue or any other way.

Also, saying you have a choice of whether to use the anvils or not is only half correct. You certainly can elect to go without them, but for normal players (and certain builds) you pretty much need all of the help you can get.

 

@Desi I agree with you. I've come from a long time of playing all sorts of games, and I prefer the more balanced ones to the ones who think silly artifical difficulty is logical.

That said, what do you mean by negate these effects? You can negate corruption by rerolling the artifact if it is one, and honestly, can monsters corrupt non artifact weapons?

 

@DavidB1111 We are going to drive this point into the ground before too long, lol.

Even if the anvil's buff stopped having negative values which i think would be a detractor to the gameplay, that does not mean you will stop people from scumming on it. People will still continue to do so if they get a roll that they dont like. For example, something like +counter, or +accuracy is often far less useful than something like +resist, or +damage.