I decided to face my fears and play a magic-less build.

...It's actually kind of fun. If a bit long-winded. My god, monster zoos take forever...

My build: Swords, Dual Wielding, Smithing, Throwing, Clockwork Knight, Geology, Wrestlemancy (mod skill)

Things I've noticed doing this:

*What the hell Diggle Archmages ranged corruption spells what the hell


*Stats on thrown weapons are superflous. Also I have an actual use for all that bronze with this build!

*Rocket jumping is my new favorite skill. Anything I don't want to touch me, I can just teleport away from it, hurting the crap out of it in the process. Incidentally Gaslamp you may want to consider lowering the cooldown for Move In Mysterious Ways.

* Roguish Renovation's anti-caster monsters are horribly unbalanced. Allegedly they exist to give mages an equivalent to the corruption and counter-crit-crit problems melee classes face. However, C-C-C isn't nearly as much of an issue anymore, as I can personally attest, and Diggle Archmages what the hell so mages are vulnerable to corruption anyway. Whereas, the anti-caster monsters in RR have a tendency to reduce your mana from full to null (and add an antimagic field to boot) as soon as you open the doors to a zoo.

*Wrestlemancy is overpowered. The second skill heals you whenever you counter anything. I'm pretty much invincible at 25% base counter. I cleared DL5's zoo without using a single healing item doing this. (Though I did level up in the middle, so that might be a factor.)

 

I give. v0.56 is planned to have their on-hit mana drain reduced one step down (from 50% to 10% and 90% to 50% respectively). Magic reflect values may go up, though.

And to be fair, the monsters that drain mana are on a different level than the monsters that silence. I may give arcane disruptors another spell so as to reduce how often they cast silence and find another way to annoy mages.

 

A really good way to irk mages would be to give them a castbuff that damages them, or drops their mana. That way, if you lose mana - it's because you chose to lose it, as opposed to because there were some mobs in the zoo who ohshit no mana, no buffs, no spells.

 

Thanks a bunch for that.

I do agree with putting magic reflect on those guys instead of the mana drain; that way they still annoy the heck out of mages, but don't mess things up in monster zoos. As much.

The idea of anti-caster enemies is excellent, but spending entire floors without any mana/casting ability at all is slightly unfair. Remember, warriors can still whack Magic Golems with their feet if they have to, but mages are sitting ducks without any spells.

 

It's a good idea, but I'm not sure if triggeroncast or castbuff are now callable from buffs alone (the workaround I'm using in Arcanist is to have a triggeroncast linked to a skill which in turn checks for the presence of a buff before activating). If it isn't, it's definitely something to be petitioned for.

 

It isn't callable from within buffs, nor from items.

 

lrn2

 

...on a pure warrior before floor 8?

(mysterious portals ftw)

 

Then put things in between you and them. It's a non-damaging missile spell, so they have to have line of effect.

 

I reiterate: Mysterious Portal.

Also my reaction was mostly due to not knowing ranged corruption attacks existed in the game. At all.

 

That's what I love about this game. I almost never play as mages, and it's good to know that they are just as viable as my tinkering, dual wielding space marine dungeon crawler guy.

 

Wait? Diggle Arch-Mages can corrupt you at range?!
Oye. Who the hell thought that was a good idea to add to the game?
Seriously, that's just bad.
I could go on about it until the sun grew cold and dim. Melee already is hard, why make it 10 times harder?

 

Maybe they're something Fax made; it's been a long time since I actually played without mods, so I don't remember.

And DavidB1111, please remember that you can resist corruption completely with magic resistance, so getting some of it will make them slightly less annoying.

 

Right. My bad.
Still, it's not nice.

 

Because it was designed not to be nice.

And I do agree that corruption itself, while not the most irritating things in rogue-likes, it annoying. Not annoying enough for me to stop playing, but an annoyance nonetheless.

 

Well, call me Captain Obvious then.
And regarding corruption, as I've stated more times than should be possible, enchant weapon scrolls and enchant armor scrolls fix item corruption in some roguelikes.

If anything, this game is supposed to be Baby's first roguelike.
So, I'm not sure why Corruption of items in this game is about 300 times more annoying than it is in ADOM or Angband. And like 400 times more annoying than Slash'EM.
Really, it makes no sense for Corruption to be more annoying in this game, than it is in basically any other roguelike ever.

It basically boggles my mind that this game which claims to introduce people to roguelikes has a mechanic in it, that not even some of the hardest roguelikes ever would dare to do.
Okay, Angband has a curse weapon that destroys your weapon, even artifacts, because that makes sense, but you're silly for reading unidentified scrolls past floor 15.
Potions of death got removed though.

I hate being annoying over this, okay, I really do!
If someone could explain in a nice way, why they want Corruption to be more annoying than it should be, I'll finally shut the hell up.
And really, who could pass up the opportunity of getting me to shut the hell up.

 

All me. Get some resist and reflect or use cover.

 

You're fired, Fax. Pick up your severance check, pack up your stuff and then leave the office by 5 PM today.

My question from above still remains, if someone can tell me why they chose to make Corruption so bleeding annoying, and completely against the logic of a beginner's roguelike, please let me know, in a nice manner, and I'll not grumble about it again, and really, who wouldn't pass up the opportunity to get me to shut the hell up?
I'm sure Fax would pay money for that.

 

"I can never be free of cover-based shooting, can I?"
Paraphrasing Yahtzee, Zero Punctuation