Variations of the Dual Stave Alchemy build were some of the best, if not the best builds in the game. It provided so much awesome synergy between the skills, like the Alchemy making Fruitful Staff, and Fruitful Staff fueling the alchemy, and Krong's blessings being all the more powerful thanks to Magic Power. Now, I'm not so sure. Here are some observations I made since I started playing 1.0.8: You can no longer craft things without having the items recipe, thanks to the wonky new crafting system. So that means you have to get the recipe for the Fruitful Staff, and more importantly, the Metal Orby Staff (which is needed for the Jingly Jangly Staff of Crystals). Alchemy was seriously nerfed. Now you need two pieces of fruit to make one drink, and two drinks to make the booze. That's a total of four pieces of fruit for 35 MP. I may have overlooked some things but those were what stood out. Seriously, (I've heard that) before I first played DoD you used to be able to make 9(!) drinks from one piece of fruit (1 fruit->3 drinks, 1 drink->3 booze). Yes, I admit that was broken and they nerfed it, allowing only one per fruit. But the current formula is way too greedy. Before I found out you could craft items without finding the recipe for it, I've been doing it the "right" way. Basically, I came to the conclusion that that was a tremendous pain so I was glad and relieved when I found out. The new system makes it tedious and hard, especially for Permadeath chars (no reloading). Anyway, I'm not here to rant; I want to know your opinions of the current state of the Dual Stave Alchemy build, especially compared to the new skills in the expansion. Right now I've been having a blast with Werediggle, so I was wondering if any builds of that would be any effective (overall) as the Dual Stave Alchemy.
I can't comment on the Alchemy thing, but personally I like the fact that you need to learn a recipe before being able to craft its corresponding item. It just makes more sense than being able to circumvent the bookcase system entirely just by browsing the wiki.
Maybe I'm just too used to the "Minecraft Style" crafting. If crafting were to stay the same as before, I guess that would sort of defeat the purpose of bookshelves, wouldn't it?
Yeah, made no difference at all this time around, I used to end up with 300+ bottles of quality booze on 1.0.6 (I stopped manufacturing them because, well I draw a line at 300 ), this dropped by roughly half now, so meh. The Orby Staff delays things a bit, but I eventually find/craft them, and I've never failed to come across the fruitful staff recipe. In all some semblance of challenge has returned to the build, that's my personal take on difficulty and your mileage may vary, depending on preference, but I'd say that it was still overpowered.
Yeah - if we haven't broken it, we haven't done it right. So what went down was this. When we moved to Craft 2.0., we found ourselves wondering what on earth to do about the hidden recipes. We realized we could either a) unhide all recipes and get rid of the bookshelves, or b) enforce the requirement. After some discussion, we started looking at how a lot of the "winning builds" basically involved going for the Fruitful Staff/Mace Of Pleaides as fast as possible, and then using that to scum your way through with a dual wielding build. Which... is kinda lame? So, yeah, we'll see how this goes. If you get a recipe for a Staff/Mace/something in a bookshelf - and we'll probably add more opportunities for getting recipes in the game at a later date - and it's viable to start trying to put the recipe chain together to get there, then by all means, go for it. But other than that, it shouldn't be that you're playing the game strategizing towards getting the MoP or the FS.
Well one of the problem is that the FS is game breaking, right ? The fact that it indefinitely creates fruit pushes towards lame strategies to farm easy monsters until you get x billions mana potions. Maybe a solution could be to turn the Fruit staff into a wand with a number of charges ?
Strategizing around powerful items was the only purpose of Smithing. Might as well take away the 'health potion strategy' of Alchemy. Potions and Bolts last till the end of the dungeon - Equipment doesn't. Look at the main reasons why people picked Smithing: Flail of Pleiades (high quality artifact with good random stats) Ring of Iron Thorns (+16 counter for the set) Mana Torus (used to be good before Heavy Armour was given a mana regen penalty) Emerald Amulet (random stats amulet, typically worse than the Cybertronic Amulet) That's it! The rest of the weapons are trash compared to just about anything you get out of an Evil Chest, and the best craftable armour can be randomly found on dungeon level 7. Sure, make it harder for people to rush the best equipment in the game, but don't turn a 5 pt skill into a giant diceroll. I'd have preferred making the recipes harder. Make the 'Flail of Pleiades' require a 'Triple Flail'. Make some ingredients only spawn on lower levels. Add Level 6 recipes and a hard to craft 'Smithing Apron'. Just do something so I don't end up on Dungeon Level 10 reading about the amazing equipment that I never got to craft. Green Harvest?
Smithing goes obsolete even harder in RotDG. The expansion apparently includes ways to get up to smithing 7 but has no new recipes at all, meanwhile you find truckloads of items better than anything you can craft. Rings of thorns used to be a good standby after all your other equipment was obsolete because their base stats are so valuable, but by the time you get down to level 15 you're finding rings with so many randoms that your thorns look kind of piddly.
The solution for Smithing is easy. Add more hidden recipes for some of the new items like the Embossed Serpentine other armor pieces. I do think Metal Orby staff should be unhidden, and Jingly Jangly Staff Hidden though for alchemy purposes. Right now I think you're better off taking non-craft skills, due to the combo of heavy nerf (warranted) and super-annoying UI.
