I've seen this discussed in other threads, but I think it deserves one of its own. The fungal arts skill is cool, but too much of a pain in the butt to actually use. The spores that you generate automatically go into your inventory instead of an open slot on the quickbar, so you either have to have a 1 spore reserve to keep them there or dig through your inventory to find the newly generated spores after you use your last one. They also have to be picked up and placed on each corpse and then put back in the quickbar instead of being selected and then right-clicking. It makes a fun skill enough of a PTA that I don't bother with it.
The Essential DoD Core Skill Rebalance mod takes out some of the steps for that, removing spores entirely and changing it into a spell you cast on corpses. The items then instantly go into your inventory. But honestly, I don't know why the game shouldnt just do it all automatically and take out that spell step too. I know spores and stuff can be used to make lutefisk later, but it adds so much tedium.
Well, there's that and there's the fact that someone might actually be able to create a mod that uses spores as a crafting ingredient. ~shrugs~ But to be honest, I think this one is a left-over from the time when they were first creating all the skill trees and used that as a place-holder for something. Not that I mind it, since I only ever took Fungal Arts when I'm not getting crafting, and that means I still have more inventory space than usually. And, as SkyMuffin wrote, Essential's CSR "mod" alleviates the issue for now.
If you want the spore change with all of the other balance changes that come with CSR, here's a really quick and dirty hack for it. It doesn't do anything except replace Spore Stash with an identically-named spell that turns a target corpse into a mushroom in your inventory (or possibly at your feet, i don't remember which.) Just rename it to spellDB.xml and copy it into your Dungeons of Dredmor/Game folder. (Don't forget to rename the original so that it's there in case you want to change things back. )
