Well, it's finally here. After roflstomping Going Rogue/Permadeath with my Promethian/Psionic/Blood Mage (read: broken) build and finally getting my "Left for Dred" achievement in the waning minutes of 1.0.3, I exited the game and let Steam do it's thing. So, I'm doing the obvious thing now (other than casting Fireball): starting a new Moderation/Permadeath character to see what's what in 1.0.5-land. I decided on a slight variation of my Vampire Fencer build: Vampirism Swords Dual-wielding Berserker Rage Astrology Blood Mage Burglary The plan is to use Blood Mage combined with Vampirism to leech life AND mana off of every kill. In this way, I can get more uptime on my Astrology buffs and not have to stack tons of Magic Power and Mana Regen to do it. Maybe. We'll see how it goes. After dubbing my bizarrely built new Hero "Fencyr", I set forth to the Dungeons of Dredmor! This could be spoiler-ish, I guess, so if you don't want a blow-by-blow of what's changed, stop reading now. Floor 1: Who knew Diggles, Blobbies, and Batties could be so rude? The monsters are asking me if I feel lucky, punk, and saying that they have fought diggles more frightening than I. Also, one claimed that I am terrible at this; another told me to 'prepare to re-roll'. Thier arrogance did NOT go unpunished. Blobbies now drop pools of damage-over-time acid under your feet. I approve. Monsters can no longer hide behind walls or opened doors; their proximity Health Bars give them away. Not having to hover over individual monsters one a time to decide which of the 4 that are close to you to attack is also very nice. WASD or Arrow Key move-and-attack IS FIXED and no longer tries to re-open a door (while standing in a doorway) and allow monsters to get free hits. Yay! Monsters on Floor 1 are dropping 6 and even 7 Zorkmids. No more killing Arch Diggles on Floor 10 for 5 Zorkmids each, looks like. Mini-map Icons are pretty handy so far. It's easier to tell "up" and "down" staircases apart; knowing where Anvils or Krong or locked UberChests™ are lurking is very handy. You are represented by a little mannish icon now; what was it before? I can't remember for the life of me. A blue dot maybe? Of course, none of these icons are distinguishable unless you blow the mini-map up to at least 2x size, although the minimap itself is pretty worthless at 1x, not just the icons - unless you're playing 800x600. I've encounted at LEAST ten new room types/shapes that I haven't seen before on the first floor alone, including: a new rectangular dead-end, a long vertical hall-like thing; a library with 3 READABLE bookshelfs in a row; a Lutefisk "treasure room" with the fishy sconces; a prison (?) with bars and a rusty bin; a new mini-alchemy lab with a single workstation and some powders in the corner; and a room with a "secret passage" where you walk under a wall to get to a small room with a trap and some loot. Also, a new Chalk scrawl... something about "who said it has to be fair?" Also, I think I've read more recipes off Bookshelves on this floor alone than I have in entire 1.0.3 Dungeons - should make all Crafting Skill trees much more viable for those of you don't tab out to a wiki all the time when crafting. There also appear to be more Vending Machines spawning; I've seen far more than normal - most of them seem to be Throw and Bolt machines. I'm assuming this was done to help low-level archers out - most of them seem to be filled specifically with low-level, low-star, relatively inexpensive ammo. New Vampirism is much better early on. I'm leaching 3-ish life per hit. Eating corpses still yields exactly 4 Health/body. Related: bodies linger on the ground longer: roughly 40 turns now! End result: it's no longer "get hit for 4 damage, leech one, pray you level up and get 'Drinker of the Dead' before you die" like it used to be starting out for Vampies. The new -15 Dodge trap is nasty too, I mis-fired on disarming one and thankfully didn't get swarmed before it wore off about 75 turns later. Lastly, the first floor is no longer missing rooms and is the same size as any other Dungeon level. Final Tally: Level 5; completed all 3 Inconsequentia Quests; 10,800 Zorkmids; current Score is 9196. I'll add some more tomorrow when I get home from work. What are you guys noticing? Liking? Disliking?
" in the waning minutes of 1.0.3, I exited the game and let Steam do it's thing." its No really, nice post. Thanks for the info, I can't wait to go home and play!
What level were you doing the 3 HP leech? That still seems pretty low for a melee character. Mages used to be able to melee leech with staves for like 10-20 depending on magic strength. Sounding like it still isn't tooled for melee correctly. Really hope to hear back and hear that it scales better now, since 3-4 leech isn't gonna help past the first floor.
The whole post was my adventures on the first floor. I have no idea what stat(s) - if any - cause Vampirism to scale now; all I know for sure is that I was getting 3 life back per hit on my first Diggle.
Well I went through files, and it still seems to have the piercingF attribute, which is the scaling factor. But they could of modified it to favor attack power now or something. But judging from patch notes, the original promise to fix it sounds like they didn't.
Actually, it only counts magic power, as do most other spells. The formula is 3+.25*spell power, which explains why you're able to get 3 life per hit at level 1.
I have a Vamp/Dual/Staves/Blood/Necro/Alch/Burg right now, level 11, 3/4 of the way through dungeon level 4, and I am extremely disappointed that Drinker of the Dead doesn't scale with -something-. At level 4 when you only have 25 health, 4 hp is significant, but when you have 60 health its useless. I want my skill point back. :| Also, while I am loving Nightmare Curse (and how my mana goes up and down like a yo-yo), I don't get the point of Deathly Hex being the first-tier talent, unless it is that you're the one who's supposed to die if you cast it. It's the same as Meatshield, a significant risk to use at low levels, and of dubious worth later on. I so want to love Fleshsmithing, but I can't so long as I'm constantly at risk of seeing a tombstone cheerily informing me that I killed myself with my own buff.
Yeah, that's what I hate about skills like Meatshield and Deathly Hex. I'm surprised that I even use them in my late-game Necro/Dual/Staves/Blood/Alch/Burg/MoA. Speaking of Necro, I'm actually liking the new Ankh amulet with the Necromantic resistance, which comes in handy whenever I feel like popping Pact of Fleeting Life, which I've learned to love in the mid/late game. Oh, and does anyone know what the Terrible Price for This Translation Is All Wrong does?
Soo, Smithing has been nerfed a lot. Only getting 2 Iron out of 1 Hematite (works with other ores too) any more with Smithing maxed out. I'm not sure if I'm ok with that.
This was discussed long before the patch came out -- part of the reasoning was that people were saving their ore up until tier 5 smithing. Now there's no reason to do that since you get 2 regardless of level. I have mixed feelings about it -- the positive side of it is that now the usefulness of crafting lasts a lot longer into the game. The negative, besides the problem finding raw materials, is that my inventory has to stay cluttered for a lot longer. Note also that shops seem to be a lot rarer, at least past level 1 or 2, so that also may increase the usefulness of crafting, but also contributes tons to the clutter.
"Well I went through files, and it still seems to have the piercingF attribute, which is the scaling factor. But they could of modified it to favor attack power now or something. But judging from patch notes, the original promise to fix it sounds like they didn't. " That's also my concern. When will the piercingG come out?
hrm, then there is no real sense in having ores in the game any more, because you will smelt them right at the moment you find them (they could also use two bars of the metal instead). Before it was a gameplay wise decision you had to take - level smithing up, right at the start to start with crafting, or go with another skill. This decision is now being made for you, which is imo not a good thing. I will have to test this a bit, but I think, gameplay wise smithing is now not in the primary choices of skills for a warrior any more, since crafted weapons are best made up to dungeon lvl 5, since from that point on you will find top tier weapons anyway. I'm not sure if you find enough chalk to make top tier stuff until that level to make the skill worth using.
@myAces Smithing is all about the armor and with the addition of piercing resistance it's better than ever. One Rough Iron Hjalmr + Iron Ingot makes you immune to Lil Batty's for example. Weapon-wise, Maces are your best bet to get the most out of Smithing. The Flail of Pleiades is an artifact which means it is granted (a lot of) random stats when you craft it.
@myAces There still is at least one purpose for ore, and thats potions of gold (though they are silly to make -- it's far more financially rewarding to simply convert the ore to ingots and sell them). That said, smithing is VERY beneficial. Without it, in my current game I'd be walking around on level 4 (assuming I survived that far) still with only a pair of 6 damage maces and bronze armor and/or steel breastplates (the best I've found so far). Instead I'm dual-wielding triple-flails and having most physical damage simply bounce off me.
The adventure continues! Floor 2... FIGHT! Since I'm going with my Rogue-y build, I'm eschewing Heavy Armor and trying to keep my Magic Power, Dodge, Crit, and Counter up. This hurts when Enraged Diggles are nosing me for 6 Piercing Damage, but my Vampirism is, for now, keeping pace. Things I note are that Up Stairs are now Green icons on the minimap instead of Yellow ones. *shrug* I can't quite confirm this 100% yet, but UberChests™ and the Mellow Shrine/Eyeball Shrine/Monolith don't seem to have Minimap icons, which angers me a bit because those are the 2 things I can never remember where they are. Krong Anvils and Inconsequentia Shrines and Lutefisk Shrines are all pretty easy to find just by blowing up the map and examining rooms shapes a bit, whereas UberChests™ and Shrines can be literally anywhere. Oh well, I'll see if Floor 3 yields any more icons. Onwards! One of the first things I get is a quest from Inconsequentia to plop an item on the Eyeball Shrine. This promptly summons a Boss Mustache Golem for me to do battle with. Ow, ow, ow, OW! The thing has about 60 HP and hits for 10 damage; I only survive because I keep Radiant Aura up and back off to shoot it in the face every time it stuns itself. I spend the next 8 rooms snarfing up corpses to get my HP out of the Danger Zone. And then... my first 1.0.5 Monster Zoo! Whee!!! Not sure if the Stacked Corpses Bug is still in effect, but by keeping Radiant Aura up my #1 Priority, the monsters kept surrounding me and killing themselves on it, while my Vampirism attacks kept my Health at reasonable levels. It was a small Zoo - only about 45 monsters - but I was able to blow through them all easily. Also, NO BLOOD SPATTER LAG. None. Zero. Zilch. It was glorious and lag-free. On the plus side, the "you accidentally the whole thing!" painting for clearing the Zoo is AWESOME, and my bloody reward was a nice helm to replace my "artifact" quest reward Traffic Cone. I also can't believe how many hilarious new sayings were added to monsters. "kill the eyebrowed one!" "hero - come out and play!" "i smell a raise coming!" "hang on, i have a cramp" "fear my martial prowess" "you smell like diggle pee" "this was supposed to be my day off"... Good stuff guys, loving it. On that note, the Graves on Floor 2 have also been expanded. I've found at least 4-5 new dead "heroes" to read the exploits of, most of whom where members of the ill-fated group, the Heroic Friends. One of said Friends' graves even spawns 2 random pieces of armor at the sarcophagus' base, a nice variation of that guy who had more swords than sense and left 2 of them at the feet of HIS sarcophagus. Scaling Zorkmids are great - I'm getting between 8 and 20 per monster on Floor 2 here. I'm up over 22,000 Zorkmids, but my shops have been utterly devoid of anything worth buying, so I'm sure that plays a role in my current stockpile of excess coins. Here's hoping some high-damage Sword or 2-4 stat Ring or Necklace pops up in a shop at some point. The game is taunting me again. I just beat the game last night using Promethian/Psionics/Blood Magic - and never found a single Orb of Nothing. I was able to beat Dredmor by "dual-wielding" Starry Orbs. So, guess what's for sale in the third and final Brax Shop on the 2nd Floor? None other than... wait for it... an Orb of Nothing. FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU... Other than the Taunting Orb, the third Shop is a treasure trove of goodies. I buy some Plastic Plate Mail, an Omnipotent Pork Sword, and a Wind-up Doubleplus Crossbow. Not too shabby. I only have a few rooms left until I head down to Floor 3. Monster balance seems much better... so far. Most of the "lol, just kill it" monsters seem to have been toughened up a bit, and I encountered an Unfriendly AI that hit me for 4 damage (1 slashing, 3 piercing), which was much more reasonable than 8 (16 crit) piercing you had to try and endure in 1.0.3. I had an Octo spawn, as well, and it hit me for 6-8 damage with a spell - much better than the 2 damage they did from range before. Makes them into something you don't just mow through by the dozen. And... that's a wrap. Time to see what Floor 3 has in store for me. Final Tally: Character is up to Level 8; completed all 3 Inconsequentia Quests; 15,700 Zorkmids (after my shopping spree); current Score is 33,880.