I've been brainstorming a mod again (about all I do with them) and this time I think I'm on to something. In any case, the structure of the mod depends on one thing: Is Vampirism's "no-eat, no-regen" clause able to be used somewhere else, or is it hard-coded into Vampirism? While I'm asking questions, I've got another which is kind of the contingency plan if my first idea goes wrong. Is it possible to halt health regen at all? What exactly does negative Health Regen stat do? Edit: I need to figure out how to change the title of this thread.
I'm not exactly sure, but I think Vampirism is in fact hardcoded, unless they changed it. I don't think you can stop it in any way outside of that, but a high negative number is a quasi stop. Remember how regen works? (Basue value of difficulty) - (Regen) = Number of turns you need to get one health point back. So a negative number in regen would delay your regeneration, if I am correct and Dredmor has working math
So then, it's impossible without Vampirism's code to completely halt health regen? You can slow it down to an unreliable crawl, but not stop it entirely. Good to know. Thank you!
I've used -999 in a few places to mimic "you have no metabolism anymore". But more importantly in the context of the OP, you should look in SkillDB under Vampirism's inital entry: That <flags> line is totally portable into another skill if you want to have another skill that isn't allowed to eat. There's another in Killer Vegan that allows you to make another skill that can't eat meat.
Ooh, thank you, Essence. I'm still new to this, so sometimes the code is hard to parse. In any case, I see no reason to create a new thread when I've got a good one right here. The mod I'm planning is in fact a "Zombie" mod, where you can take the role of an undead non-sparkly as you delve the dungeons. This is why I wanted to know if you could stop health regen and food without taking Vampirism, as it would affect how I portray the "dead, non-healing body" aspect. So, I'll stunt Health Regen as per Essence's suggestion and add that noFood flag to make you find your food. Spoiler: Zombie Adventurer Zombie Adventurer Warrior You're not sure exactly what happened, but someone ambushed you just outside the dungeon. He was awfully bitey... Level 1 Undead Resilience - 999 Health Regen + 2 Armor Absorption + 1 Toxic Resistance # Can not eat food So now you're a zombie. You can feel yourself starting to fall apart, but getting hit doesn't hurt as much. Although, you can't shake this gnawing hunger... Level 2 Chomp + 2 Armor Absorption + 1 Putrefying Resistance It turns out that living flesh was just the answer to your hunger problem! You're not really picky though, you'll bite just about anything that moves. @Chomp (skill) Low CD (10-20) Targets melee range Moderate Crushing/Putrefying damage (? Can this type of skill inherit damage bonuses? Probably wants to scale well, this is your main method of healing outside of potions) Receive Well Fed, turns either a function of one of your stats, one of the monster's stats, or damage done (need to find the best situation here) Remove minor 'hunger' debuff Add buff depending on monster taxa; Animal gets "yay brain"-type buff, Construct gets some "crunchy/iron is good for you" thing, etc. Level 3 Zombie Puke +2 Armor Absorption +1 Toxic Resistance +1 Acidic Resistance You've found out that, with a little effort, you can hork up the vile brew that's been bubbling in your undead stomach. @Zombie Puke (skill) Moderate CD (30-50) Targets 'T' cone in front of you, leaves acid puddles on ground Moderate Acidic & Toxic Damage (Can scale worse than Chomp) Level 4 Insatiable Hunger + 2 Armor Absorption + 1 Putrefying Resistance + 1 Acidic Resistance (This level may deserve some more stats) Adds a chance to cast Chomp on a melee hit. (?) Add chance to Chomp as a counter No matter how much you eat, you just stay hungry. It's gotten to the point where you sneak in bites in normal combat. Level 5 Infectious Bite + 2 Armor Absorption + 1 Necromantic Resistance + 1 Toxic Resistance It dawns on you that, if you were bitten by a zombie, and you are now a zombie, then what's stopping you from biting other people and making THEM zombies? All it takes is a simple bite to pass on the voodoo magic/zombie virus/whatever it is. @Infectious Bite (skill) High CD (99, most likely) Targets Melee range Inflicts Charm on things that don't resist it Inflicts an inevitably-killing debuff to the Charmed monster, but only if it charms. (You don't recover from being a zombie, in most cases.) Now that I do have a way to prevent health regeneration and food consumption, I may move Chomp down to the first level. Still, it could be an interesting challenge, getting that first level without dying. Anyway, let me know what you think. I'll accept about any criticism, improvements, or other ideas you may have. I'll start putting this into actual code so that I can test this (and so I don't forget about it).
Uuuuh, no regeneration at all is really, really hard for the first level. That's the point in the game where you have no options! No weapons, no throwables, no potions, no skills... You shouldn't get hit a lot with 2 AA off the bat, combined with some warrior skills, but Potatoes and bees could really, really wreck you.
Yeah, that's definitely something I considered. This is far from set in stone, but I'm wary of putting Chomp as a starting-out skill. It does force the player to take that first level in Zombie just to heal, which is bad. I'll probably change it so that you only lose your regen when you devote a point in, and gain your heal skill. Still, like Vampirism, you cannot eat. This isn't supposed to be one of those "pick it and done" skills like Dual Wield
This may be an impossible task to balance, given that in theory it has to be balanced with AND without Vampirism also on the same character. I'll be interested in seeing how you take on that challenge.
Doesn't vampirism scale of regeneration these days? That means vampirism would basically become useless when picking this. Which is ok, since you don't incur any further drawback either. Vampirism would still be a bad choice, due to lack of strong skills later on in comparison to other trees.
Yeah, Chomp and the charm are basically the reasons to take this tree. The extra armor and resistances are more gravy than anything. But then again, why does anybody take Vampirism? I need Chomp to be able to scale well, well enough to compete with Vampirism. It triggers on more things (most likely everything), but I'm afraid of it being overpowered or underpowered if it scales to the wrong stat. Do you have any recommendations?
