I'm planning on making a mod to add a bunch of crossbow related features to the game (probably three skill trees and a lot of crafting overhaul) so I figured it would be a good idea to ask here to see what people want to see in terms of crossbow additions. The goal here is to make crossbows viable primary weapons, giving range at the expense of melee defense, like mages that use arrows instead of mana. Listed below are some examples of what I'm planning on doing. Skill trees: http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/skill-elemental-arrow.3615/ A better version of deadshot - enhanced crit and maybe some active buffs on bows (Assassination for bows essentially) Some other third thing (Ideas?) items: more craftable arrows (ex. burnt out wand + iron ingot= eldritch arrow) more arrows in general more high tier crossbows (Once you get the rail bolt thrower or the fire one, that's really it - compare to the other weapons that have a bunch of high tier choices to pick from) Maybe a quiver to go in the offhand slot? (will ad 'on-hit' effects to bows at the expense of no melee bonuses) What I'm looking for: Suggestions for arrow types to add, suggestions for crafting recipes, suggestions for skills, feedback, especially on the quivers
Just off the top of my head: The Ethereal Crossbow - a semi-invisible crossbow that does damage exclusively, a reference to fantasy FPS doom-clone Heretic, where this weapon was mostly a reskinned shotgun The BFC - Doom's BFG in crossbow form, clear rooms with this thing but with a huge area of effect so it'd be hard not to get caught in the explosion. If you decide to go with this, I'd throw in something to discourage people to use it as a backup weapon rather than just spamming it constantly like a debuff on hit, otherwise it'd be the obvious top-tier. Silver Bolts - nothing all that fancy, you tinker a silver ingot, you get bolts that do and . Brimstone Bottle Arrows - pretty much the same thing as acid and poison bottle arrows, but with the brimstone cloud effect A few half-formed ideas: Maybe a high-level crossbow with a huge bonus to EDR because it's got a laser sight, the tinkering recipe would obviously need a wand of laser. A tiny ballista, possibly hit by a shrinking spell, that the player can carry around and use as a crossbow, bonus points if the graphic still has little wheels on the bottom. Edit: One last one! Either a crossbow or bolts, doesn't matter which, that uses a horadric lutefisk cube in its recipe, does heavy and transforms enemies into chunks of lutefisk. That would be pretty rad.
BFC seems a bit superfluous with the squid bolt and bolt of mass destruction, but if I can think of a way to balance it right, then it might work... Brimstone arrows seem a bit superfluous, too, since there are already poison, acid, and fire bolts, a couple of which use brimstone in the recipe, but aside from that everything else looks fun. A lutefisk cube arrow would definitely be fun - BMD strength but only on one enemy or something along those lines. Right now, I really want feedback on the quiver idea. I have a couple written up, but I'm not sure if they should go in the necklace, shield or ring slot, and I'm not sure if they should apply a constant damage buff (affecting melee, too) or give you an on crossbow hit effect. And either way, I'm not sure if they should penalize melee attributes, too... Keep in mind my art's not the best, especially with pixel based art... I'll probably upload a beta version with all placeholder art first, and either recruit someone or just slowly add art in. I don't want the art to push back release a few weeks when everything else is ready...
How about more ammo types? We could have AoE arrows that deal damage over time. Like a flaming aura that follows the monster around. That would obviously be double edged. The Mutant Mod has the code to do that to the player, so I would wager it could be applied to a monster too. I wonder if it is possible to have a BoMMDB (Bolt of Many Mass Destruction Bolts) that launches other BMDs out in random directions until they hit something. Heck, even the four sides would be excellent. With that if you were not really careful you would suicide. For a much smaller AoE but massive damage you could have a BoSBMMDB (Bolt of Shield Blocked Many Mass Destruction Bolts) That would first make shields a few spaces around the target that will last just a few turns and then launch the BMDs as the above BoMMDB. A few of those should instagib Dredmor. They would have to leave massive debuffs on the player when they are used or it would be equal to cheating.
Hmm not possible to the best of my knowledge. All missile effects would start at the player, so even if you had random directions from impact, all the subspell missiles would start at the player's location. More of a hail of arrows effect than a MIRV. Hail of arrows effect is possible though, but the subspells would not be true crossbow bolts, just missile spells.
A bolt that causes an aura definitely works. I know there's code for an ice DoT in the game already, so I can (read:should) be able to turn that into a crossbow effect. There might already be enough AoE arrows, especially since the bolt eruptor makes every arrow work like a fire bottle bolt, though I might add one or two others since you're not the first to suggest it. I'm not sure about adding bolts stronger than a bolt of mass destruction, to be honest... I don't think anything should ever come close to one shotting Dredmor, and even if they kill you, it doesn't matter since you killed Dredmor, so it counts as a win. I'm still looking for opinions on quivers, too! Are they worthwhile to add in the game? Should they apply penalties to melee attacks? Constant bonuses or give you an on-hit effect? Which slot should they take up? Edit: Also, when would you like a beta release of what I have so far? And how many items should I make before going gold? Currently, I have 1 skill tree, 12 quivers, 6 bolts, 4 crossbows and 12 recipes. (No custom art except for 1 generic quiver placeholder)
