HAIL AND WELL MET, FELLOW ADVENTURERS SUPER SHORT VERSION: I disabled selling items to Brax because it encourages players to act in ways that lessen their own enjoyment of the game. Next I removed a bunch of tiny item variations that ended up causing lots of different stacks in your inventory, clogging it up with things you did intend to actually use. Finally, I forced all bolts to be destroyed on firing, and am considering doing that for Thrown items as well, but we'll see. To compensate, all bolt crafting recipes now create stacks of 20. LONG-WINDED PEDANTIC VERSION: Recently I picked Dungeons of Dredmor up again for the first time in over a year, and started playing a Crossbow using pure Rogue with Tinker, Fungal Master, Perception, and Archery... This was a huge mistake! Not because you can't win like that, but because the sheer amount of inventory management you have to perform just to play. It highlights a lingering issue that affects all player builds, though, which is that as long as there is a reward for selling literally anything from the dungeon to Brax, there exists motivation to engage in anti-fun behavior (hording items and making many trips to Brax just to sell). My mod begins by fixing that problem! A fairly simple tweak (the same one that changes buy / sell prices based on difficulty setting) can be used to reduce all sell prices to 0. The next step is to reduce the markup on shop items by quite a bit because the primary source of income for most player builds is now destroyed. This is another easy tweak from the same file, on the line next to the sell price. There is more, though, that can be tweaked as necessary. The immediate effect of what these changes have done is make Midas effects a lot more valuable (Wand of Bling, etc...), and that is great, really. After some play testing it may be the case that actual gold drop amounts need to be tweaked upwards as well. New Purchase Prices 100% of value buy price on Elf (from 163%) 120% of value on Dwarf (from 207%) 140% of value on Rogue (from 243%) Rogue gets the biggest discount, but it was also the biggest source of monster drops and traps that you could sell to Brax, so we need to make sure items can still be purchased at all with the primary source of income removed. Next major change is for bow users! I have removed the "quality" variants of Plastic, Copper, Bronze, Iron, and Steel bolts. Instead, you now need 1-5 Tinkering skill just to make these bolts, and the "quality" mods are built in. This means Plastic Bolts will always be weak, but by the time you can make Steel bolts they will be roughly the same strength Ingeniously Scythed Steel Bolts were. There are 2 reasons for this change: 1) We don't need 20 different variations on 5 ingot types of arrows clogging up our inventory, and 2) You are no longer encouraged to horde your ingots until you have 5 Tinker skill. There is one more pair of changes that also remove the desire to horde ingots, but this is where we're going down a rabbit hole of systems that affect other systems and where making 1 change ripples into other large changes. For now, I'll leave it at all crafted bolts come in stacks of 20 regardless of your Tinker skill, and all bolts get destroyed on firing regardless of your Archery skill. The reason is that now you don't have to wander around gathering up bolts after fights, you just have more to fire in the first place (eliminating the need for bolt recycling). Nuts and Bolts There is another reason for removing bolt recovery from Archery, and that is that Archery sucks and I'm fixing that too. Archery is becoming a pure Engine (damage) skill as a result of these changes, with Tinker remaining a great partner skill as a reliable source of powerful bows and bolts. However, with Archery skill maxed out you will find yourself needing far fewer bolts to get the job done due to massive increases in damage, and this may be enough to compensate for the lack of recovering bolts for some people / builds. I'm hesitant to include this changes in IFR Mod, but it seems necessary because of how these systems all interact, and I can't very well remove arrow recovery without compensating for that somehow since it would make Archery even more pointless than it already is right now. - New Bolt Progression Table - Code: Plastic Bolt | 1 Piercing | 1 Tinker Barbed Copper Bolt | 3 Piercing | 2 Tinker Cruelly Barbed Bronze Bolt | 6 Piercing | 3 Tinker Scythed Iron Bolt | 10 Piercing | 4 Tinker Ingeniously Scythed Steel Bolt | 15 Piercing | 5 Tinker All other variants of these bolts have been removed from itemDB and will no longer spawn randomly, filling your inventory with way too many different stacks of nearly functionally identical items. I took this opportunity to normalize the damage progression as well, by removing non-Piercing damage types from the bolts to make them more consistent across different materials and upgrade levels. Testing is necessary, but I could be convinced to drop all of these down 1 Tinker requirement level so that non-Tinkers can still make Plastic Bolts, which would still do a ~LOT~ of damage with full *new* Archery tree (all 3 passives now scale w/ Caddishness, one is an AoE, and the last one does Righteous damage...). It might actually be overpowered to let Archery users create Plastic Bolts without having to take Tinker. Fungal Folly Ok so, Fungal Master is a divisive skill. I didn't really care for it, but some people swear by it. The main thing I noticed about it while playing, though, is that most of the mushroom effects were rather lacking, and there were a LOT of different ones. Much like redundant bolts, there are redundant shrooms that can be pruned to reduce the amount of inventory space being taken up. I don't have a finalized list yet, but expect things like Grunge Ear / Lobster / The Prince to be combined into a single new defensive buff mushroom, while unique shrooms like Inky Hoglantern and Odious Puffball remain untouched. One Cheese to Rule Them All The whole 11 different kinds of cheese thing is a very cute joke I love it, it made Dungeons of Dredmor stand out a lot when I was a new player. After a few dozen games though, the added inventory foolery involved in finding and having to carry 11 different kinds of cheese really got on my nerves. Now there is one Cheese to rule them all, Cheese. An added bonus is that now Cheese is grated into 3 Grated Cheese (instead of 2), so each Cheese you find can be used as part of a recipe immediately if you have the other part (Diggle Egg or Bread). Also, healing value on Deep Omelette was nerfed due to how easy they are to craft in large quantities. They now heal for 50. The idea is that by mixing in Cheese you get a bigger healing bonus than you do from just burning through a stack of Diggle Eggs without any other ingredients. Bread + Cheese normally heal for 14 by themselves, so a whopping 26 bonus healing from bothering to craft them into a Grilled Cheese. Diggle Egg + Cheese heals for 17 normally, but Diggle Eggs a lot more common than Bread, so you get 18 bonus healing. Finally, 4x Diggle Eggs are worth 40hp by themselves, so you now gain 10 bonus healing for combining 4 of them. Encrusting recipe changed to require 1 Cheese and 3 Grated Cheese. It seemed like a fairly pointless Encrust to me, but no sense in breaking it. Meat Market Again, 7 different types of meats were a bit much considering only 4 were even used by Encrusting. Now there is just Steak, Grilled Steak, and Cubes of Flesh (a low value alternative to Steak when butchering). Gaga's Glaze changed to 2 Steaks, 2 Grilled Steak, and I bet you won't even notice a difference in how frequently you can create it. Looking Forward Finally, I will be reviewing carefully every item I pick up next time I play a game of Dredmor and I will try to figure out which other items are redundant or nearly so and can be removed from the game for the sake of a cleaner inventory. The immediate result of my changes is that you will want to find a Lutefisk Cube pretty quick since you won't be selling all those traps off the floor, offals, etc... any more. I don't mind that because the Cube travels with you, so you don't need to wander around already-cleared dungeon floors to make use of it like you do with Brax.
Interesting idea. I think that rebalancing Fungal Arts might be a challenge after your changes (I've been describing it to people as 'The Poor Man's Alchemy' so I know what you mean). But not all 'shrooms are as useless (eg. Inky Hoglanterns). Reducing the variety alone could mean that you could end up with, effectively unlimited Inky Hoglantern (or one of your new more powerful 'shrooms).
to be honest, how many times did you not transmute all the mushrooms you weren't going to use? I often end up with 200 inky hoglanterns and fairywodgers
I win the game with every kind of useful mushroom in a 200 of a kind stack (some mushroom bonuses stack multiple times), and inky and healing ones at 400 stack! And by that time, gog just made his first dlc, so no PD. Anyway I don't like the idea of changing everything just for not-tripping-to-brax sake, simply because the pocket dimension can let you store everything you want, and you find it on first floor. I just put everything I want to sale into a single tile (dwarf fortress dump store style) and when I find a Brax store AND I need money, I just pop into my dimension to sell everything. Yep, that also count the bolt changes: I like having so many different bolts (I even play with lots of mods so really lots of bolts) and by playing as a engineer is to learn how to do things more efficiently. Ence we have scythed bolts! Something I've thought about changing mushooms: why don't we put some kind of proc on every kind of low level mushrooms, like Koopa Stomp for Mario mushrooms as a 1-tile teleport which can stun enemies you land on, or something like that. We could also put things into mushroom skill, so they just don't become OP all their own. Mumble.
Yeah, I haven't put a lot of thought into Fungal yet, aside from noticing how pesky managing all the mushrooms is. My main problem with it is how you need to spend x turns to get x number of buffs out of it, most of those buffs being fairly weak on their own. So if you're in combat or just about to be, you are losing turns you could be shooting bolts or zapping wands with before the monsters close on you. If you're not already in combat, the turn based buffs might run out before you even get to see the benefit. If I combined some combat buff effects and improved others it would mean getting a powerful buff instantly, without needing any crafting or magic skill. I like that idea, the only tricky thing would be making the buffs worth the turn to cast them in combat without making them too powerful. I think we can all not bother worrying about never running out of them, that seems to be the current state of Fungal Master as it is. Anyways, these are actually low priority compared to bolts, cheese, and meat, because if you don't actually take Fungal Master it is unlikely shrooms will take up as much of your time managing them as these other items will regardless of your build.
Well if you really like managing all those items it sounds like you've already got your ideal set up. I can't stand spending more time playing inventory tetris than exploring the dungeon and killing things.
Updated Archery Skill Spoiler Code: <ability name="Bolt Thrower" icon="skills/warrior/crossbow0_64.png" skill="4" level="0"> <description text="'Ability exceeds effort.' Basic crossbow training slightly increases your chance to hit, and hit well."/> <secondarybuff id="9" amount="3"/> <!-- EDR --> <secondarybuff id="4" amount="5"/> <!-- Crit --> <damagebuff piercing="2"/> </ability> <ability name="Crossbow Blast" icon="skills/fight_in_the_shade64.png" skill="4" level="1"> <description text="This technique, robed in rumour and behatted by hearsay, allows a crossbow bolt to hit with many times the force expected, knocking an enemy back. Bonus damage scales with your Caddishness, and a lesser amount of damage is dealt to enemies surrounding your target." /> <secondarybuff id="9" amount="3"/> <!-- EDR --> <damagebuff piercing="1"/> <crossbowShotBuff name="Crossbow Blast" percentage="30" /> </ability> <ability name="Bullseye" icon="skills/warrior/crossbow1_64.png" skill="4" level="2"> <description text="You only occasionally miss, and you nail head shots quite often."/> <secondarybuff id="9" amount="8"/> <!-- EDR --> <secondarybuff id="4" amount="5"/> <!-- Crit --> <damagebuff piercing="2"/> </ability> <ability name="Maverick" icon="skills/maverick64.png" skill="4" level="3"> <description text="'When you shoot to kill, aim for the heart.'; You have a chance to bore a bolt deep into the flesh of your target. This causes damage over 4 turns based on your Caddishness and reduces their chance to block greatly." /> <secondarybuff id="9" amount="3"/> <!-- EDR --> <damagebuff piercing="1"/> <crossbowShotBuff name="Drill Baby Drill!" percentage="30" /> </ability> < <ability name="Bolt Council Negotiator" icon="skills/skill_crossbow.png" skill="4" level="4"> <description text="You are great at getting your point across."/> <secondarybuff id="4" amount="5"/> <!-- Crit --> <secondarybuff id="9" amount="3" /> <!-- EDR --> <damagebuff piercing="3"/> <crossbowShotBuff percentage="30" name="Deal Closer" /> </ability> View the spoiler above for the new skill progression in Archery. The final stat boost total is +20 EDR, +15% crit, and +10 Piercing damage. The goal is to make Archery independent of requiring other skills to be a powerful source of ranged damage. Taking Tinkering is great if you want more guaranteed bolts and xbows to play with, but no longer straight up superior for damage, ESPECIALLY in the long term / end game. Now taking Tinkering is more of a tradeoff, and you should consider what you are giving up to take it since Archery is already going to boost your bow damage quite a bit. New / Revised Skills Crossbow Blast didn't used to scale damage, but since the goal is to make Archery a real engine (damage) skill all procs will now scale, and as a bonus, Crossbow Blast is now an AoE centered on the primary target in a 3x3 square. If I used the right template (someone please double check this works the way I think it does...) it causes 2+ 30% of your Caddishness split between Blasting and Piercing damage to all enemies surrounding the primary target WITHOUT further damaging the target. The primary target takes 4 + 40% of your Caddishness split between Blastaing and PIercing damage. Revised Crossbow Blast still only causes knockback on the primary target (intentionally). Code: <spell name="Crossbow Blast" type="target" attack="1" > <description text="This technique, robed in rumour and behatted by hearsay, allows a crossbow bolt to hit with many times the force expected, knocking an enemy back and causing great damage."/> <effect type="damage" blasting="2" blastingF="20" piercing="2" piercingF="20" primaryScale="3"/> <effect type="knock" amount="2" self="0"/> <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/impactA/impactA" frames="6" framerate="60" sfx="impact" centerEffect="0"/> <effect type="trigger" amount="1" spell="Crossbow Boom"/> </spell> <spell name="Crossbow Boom" type="template" templateID="20" > <description text="This technique, robed in rumour and behatted by hearsay, allows a crossbow bolt to hit with many times the force expected, knocking an enemy back and causing great damage."/> <effect type="damage" blasting="1" blastingF="15" piercing="1" piercingF="15" primaryScale="3"/> <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/impactA/impactA" frames="6" framerate="60" sfx="impact" centerEffect="0"/> </spell> Fleshbore as a proc effect from Maverick needed replacing because it only scaled with Magic Power and Archery is a Rogue skill. Now that we can scale abilities with other stats, it made sense to give Archery a unique effect which scales with an actual Rogue stat (Caddishness). Also I repurposed this proc slightly to be a powerful block and resistance debuff on enemies, since those are the only real defenses against bolts. I left the Blasting debuff resist because Crossbow Blast still does Blasting damage and I upped the rate of it proc'ing to 30% (was 20%). Keep in mind all changes to Archery reflect a world where bolt recovery no longer exists (not even on misses), and is not a benefit of taking points in Archery. Code: <spell name="Drill Baby Drill!" type="target" icon="skills/spells/fleshbore32.png" wand="1"> <effect type="bleed"/> <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/fleshbore/fleshbore" frames="7" sfx="fleshbore" framerate="100" centerEffect="1"/> <buff useTimer="1" time="4" self="0" stacksize="5" allowstacking="1" icon="skills/spells/fleshbore64.png" smallicon="skills/spells/fleshbore32.png" bad="1" > <halo name="sprites/sfx/blood_loop/blood_loop" num="6" frameRate="100" /> <secondarybuff id="7" amount="-50"/> <!-- block --> <secondarybuff id="10" amount="-2"/> <!-- armor --> <resistbuff piercing="-2" slashing="-2" blasting="-2"/> </buff> <effect type="dot" amount="4" spell="Drill Wound" /> <description text="Drills the flesh of your enemies, makes a bloody awful mess." /> </spell> <spell name="Drill Wound" type="target" icon="skills/spells/fleshbore32.png"> <effect type="damage" piercing="2" piercingF="0.15" slashing="2" slashingF="0.15" primaryScale="3"/> </spell> Finally, I replaced "Prince of the Crossbow" with Bolt Council Negotiator and changed the ability into something entirely new, though very simple and straightforward. Deal Closer is a perfect display of the raw damage output beast I am turning Archery into. Behold, ye Dredmor, and despair: Code: <spell name="Deal Closer" type="target" attack="1" > <description text="Explode your foes with Bolt Council approved self-righteousness, their preferred method of closing deals."/> <effect type="damage" righteous="5" righteousF="80" primaryScale="3"/> <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/celestial_hit/celestial_hit" frames="8" sfx="magic_damage" framerate="80" centerEffect="1"/> </spell>
