Hi, I would like to improve inventory management for xbow users, and eventually for everyone. The core ideas are as follows and are all necessary for the concept to work: Remove Barbed, Cruelly Barbed, Scythed ammo types (reduce # of types of ammo to reduce inventory clutter) Fix ammo stack creation at 20 (keep reading...) Allow creation of ammo using Silver, Gold, Electrum, Rearden, Platinum, Brass (some with additional properties such as Midas from Gold ingots) Scale bolt creation with Tinkering skill better (4-5 required for Steel, etc...) Scale ammo damage by material better (Iron Bolts 6 dmg, Steel Bolts 8 dmg, etc... because no more quality types) MULCH ALL AMMO ON FIRING (no more post-combat regathering) If I could mod all these things in, it would make xbow usage much more streamlined and cause players to spend a lot less time messing with their inventories, as well as allow for more interesting user-created bolt types. I would consider making these new bolts craft-only as a bonus for Engineers as well, and because if they dropped on the dungeon floor / were stolen from vending machines it would defeat the gains from removing the quality types in reduced inventory clutter. The stack size increase is based on the idea that you can achieve 45% ammo recovery from taking full Archery and make stacks of 12 with 6 Tinkering skill, so I built that into the ammo stack increase as compensation for never recovering bolts. I guess 17 bolts per stack would be closer to these figures, but I like the number 20 more An additional benefit to removing quality types for crafted bolts is that now things like the uncommon Bolt Moderne won't be outclassed by common Iron bolts of Scythed quality, and now you won't feel pressure to avoid crafting bolts prior to achieving the Scythed Tinker level. As well, it will help non-Tinker archers because they will be able to find and buy higher damage bolts more reliably when every Iron or Steel bolt is nearly Scythed quality by default. So what do you think? Are these changes all possible? Got any suggestions to further streamline bolt management? NEXT UP!!!! Currently, Archery is not considered an "engine" skill (primary source of damage) because Tinkering will actually cause you to do a lot more damage with xbows than Archery will due to your huge supply of high damage bolts and guaranteed 9* craftable xbow (not hard, I had one on D2). This sucks, the only real reason anyone can give me to take Archery is to recover bolts, but why would you do that when you can make a nearly infinite supply of them anyway? Take 2 points in Perception and each kill gives you around a 1% chance to spawn a Steel or Plastic ingot, in addition to all the ingots you normally find, or if you have Alchemy and Rogue Scientist you can craft many, many Plastic ingots to spawn stacks of Scythed bolts from. Even Unarmed is a better source of damage for xbow users than Archery itself, since all of their bonuses give xbow damage, and you can dual wield tomes or shields to either max your damage or defense based on perefence IN ADDITION to many hand-to-hand abilities causing enemy knockback and bonuses to defense stats. The solution is simple, remove the utility of bolt recovery to open up room for better raw damage. New progression as follows: Bolt Thrower From +2 EDR +1 Crit +15% Bolt Recovery to +3 EDR +2 Piercing +5 Crit Crossbow Blast From 1 Piercing dmg, grants Crossbow Blast 20% knockback proc on firing to 1 Pierce dmg +3 EDR, grants Crossbow Blast, 35% chance, bonus blasting damage equal to 40% of your Caddishness, 70% chance of knockback 2 tiles Bullseye From +8 EDR, +1 crit, +1 piercing dmg to +8 EDR, +5 crit, +2 piercing dmg Maverick From +1 Piercing, grants 22% chance of proc Fleshbore (4 + 30% of your Magic Power DoT for 4 turns...) to +1 Piercing, +3 EDR, grants 25% proc chance of new DoT Drill Baby Drill (5 turns of 4 + 20% of your Caddishness Piercing dmg) Bolt Council Negotiator (you are great at getting your point across...) From +3 Piercing dmg, +4 crit, +4 edr, 15% proc chance Bleeding Out (3 piercing dmg for 8 turns) to +3 Piercing dmg (10 total), +3 EDR (20 total), +5 Crit (15 total), and new ability with 30% proc chance called Deal Closer that adds 5 + 70% of your Caddishness in Rightous dmg. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ All 3 skills scaling with Caddishness has to do with how unfeeling one must be to shoot all those unarmed diggles in the back from across the screen... perhaps YOU are the monster! Also not enough skills in DoD scale with Caddishness, and it is a core Rogue stat that doesn't get enough usage in general. Nimbleness and Savvy already do enough. Deal Closer is intended as your Dredmor killer, as he does not resist Righteous damage, and I believe the concept of The Bolt Council is a jab at the NRA, which is at least as self-righteous and holier-than-thou as any vegan I've met. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Based on these changes you can expect to do a LOT more damage with your xbow, ideally enough to make Archery superior to Unarmed for any dedicated xbow user. It may be necessary to tweak down the damage from crafted bolts even further (besides just taking away advanced quality common ingot bolts), though, to prevent Tinker + Archery Reloaded from being waaaaaay too strong.
It was easy as pie to remove the arrow recovery bonus from Archery (and the bonus loot from Perception...), as well as change the bolt crafting system to graduate by material with skill level (1 = plastic, 2 = copper, 3 = barbed bronze, 4 = barbed iron, 5 = scythed steel) and set all recipes to create 15 arrows. What I'm not sure how to do is remove all the other qualities of basic arrows from drop tables and vending machines without breaking the game. I can find the items themselves in itemDB and delete them easily enough, but that seems unsafe. Will it crash the game when they don't exist and are called to drop? Anyone know how I can safely remove them?
