Preliminaries: Great game, play it more than games I paid 60 dollars for. Truly best game I have bought this whole year. Situation in short: Skills that don't require reagents are more useful than skills that do. Skills that give small modifiers are powerful in the beginning, but almost not worth it by the end game. There are some bugs (I believe) with bolt and ammo recollection. Situation in large: I always play on Rogue with my skills set to Random because I like the challenge. I have found though that after a lot of games with a lot of combinations there are some skills that are just flat out worse to have than others. Which is sad because I would like to think that every skill is useful if used correctly; but it isn't the case. Naturally some skills work better with other skills, but that isn't what I am complaining about. I truly mean that some skills have flat out less longevity and usefulness in late game scenarios than others. I have found that the most powerful skills are those that don't require reagents. For example swords skill is so much more powerful than archery because if you run out of bolts your skill that you have invested in is no longer useful until you find more bolts. (Or craft more bolts) Also a fully leveled sword skill does just as much damage (if not more) than a fully leveled archery skill (I don't think that is the actual name, but you know what I mean). Also spells are more powerful than skills like archery because at least you naturally regenerate mana. Also skills that scale with your character are more worthwhile than skills that don't scale with your character. In other words, skills like potion making is great when you are low level and potions can make or break a situation; but later on in the game I can do a lot more cool things via spells than via potions. Also, potions require reagents so that are doubly bad. I hate the alchemy skill. Final thought, bolt recollection is far to hard to do. I was fully leveled in the skill, and should be recollecting bolts a lot; but I literally recovered no bolts after I was fully leveled in the skill. (That was almost a whole floor before I died). Ideas for Solutions: Archery/Thrown Weapons: Crank the recovery rate for low level ammo (as in 95-100% if you are fully leveled in the skill) and then have it drop down as the bolts value increase. So for example acid arrows can't be recovered very easily (if at all). This will increase the usefulness of these skills. Potions/Mushrooms/ Similar items would be nice if the effects scaled with the power of the character. For example the mushroom that makes you invisible would be cool if you could change the duration of invisibility scale with your wisdom. Or the potion of strength scale as a percentage, for example +50% strength. Conclusion: I don't want all the skills to be super powerful, but I do want the skills to all be useful in their own special way; an no one skill should eclipse the desire to use another.
I do the same thing as you (see my death of barry youtube series hint hint). Rogue and Random. Without the melee weapon skill Archery and Thrown Weapons are weak. That changes if you take a melee weapon skill. The ability to damage at range for far cheaper than spells is highly valuable. I think the fact that seven skills are selected means that some skills should be taken with others. For those of us going random that's a pain.... but random skills isn't really the sensible way to play (just the most fun).
I agree with the entire OP ^^ A lot of the skills become near worthless later on and I never pick any crafting because if I do, one of these things happens: A) I run out of space in my inventory because of the mass items. B) I never manage to craft anything useful because I find more money than useful resources. C) I level up my other skills and find the items from monsters or I find artifacts that are better.
A couple of things that might help crafting: Currently, it seems as if when you craft an enchanted something with anything else, you lose all of the enchantments. If there were some high chance of keeping some of the enchantments (and curses!) from every element that went in to the final product, it would make crafting more worthwhile. For instance, I'm currently playing a character with the smithing skill. I've smithed a sword, but I'm really hesitant to use any anvils I encounter on it - because I know that when I upgrade it to the next level, it'll lose the enchantments I've put on it. Another useful thing would be something like the mushroom skill where you can swap mushrooms for other random mushrooms; this would be useful for things like powders or raw ores, since I never have chalk powder when I want it to make steel. I would also love to have a "packrat" skill tree - each level adds more slots to your inventory, and you can maybe get some bonuses for carrying around more stuff (like more stuff drops!). This would syngerize well with crafting, as you'll be more likely to have the stuff when you want it.
The crafting isnt too bad or at least Alchemy and Tinkering are decent. Alchemy is great for mages and one of the few means to instantly restore health rather than relying on 1 a turn foods. Tinkering gives Trap Affinity as well as allows you to build more and better arrows (cept for plastic arrows) with each level gain. Also with Tinkering, I noticed that even making ingots improves, making like 3 at a time which really helps in making arrows. Problems I find is with space though its not too bad unless you running multiple crafts and are unsure what items you might need. The main issue is never finding THAT item. You know what I am talking about. You have every item needed but maybe a piece of Brass or even a piece of Zinc so you can make Brass. So you are stuck with no means to craft because you can't make Brass parts. Or you go the first three levels and never find an Elven Grinder so you can't make Rust or Aluminum Powder to make potions. I think that tends to lead to being stuck with a bunch of mats you can't use and therefore takes up space. I haven't tried Blacksmithing yet but it does have some use though it is also game specific. My first attempt at making a sword using warrior, I was left with 4 dmg swords the entire time cause the shops had none and I could only find the other weapons. With a few pieces of iron, I could have easily made a much better sword (assuming i level up Blacksmithing). Edit: One thought I had is just include an ability with the crafting skills that allows you to summon random mats of a certain variety or recipes (though that should be a late end skill probably). I mean Burglary does it with lockpicks, would be nice to just summon random metals or ingots.
