Project: Community Skills Guide

Really? I figured with so much cash, you could afford to buy anything you needed and skip crafting.

 

AH! MY FACE!

Um, I mean, Vampirism Revisited on Tuesday! Honest.

I was thinking more that the careful juggling of resources feels more like crafting than anything else (how can I craft these monsters into cash?) Keep in mind that most of this is my personal opinion, which is why I welcome discussion on what other people think of the skills as they come up. Or, as we've pretty much covered all the Gaslamp skills, anything you want, I guess...

 

And now for a special feature! Our first Revisited skill - this is a skill that has been covered before but has since been significantly modified by the folks at Gaslamp. Let's take another look at it, shall we?

Vampirism Revisited
Type: Wizard
Role: Engine or Fuel Tank
Vampirism is all about getting health out of situations where you shouldn't get health! As such, you can build around it, or you can just use it to keep healthy. Be warned that if you're going for the latter, you might actually want a different skill.
Theme: First Was Digula - Now You!
Strategy:
The potentially squishy Vampire wants to get into melee to keep his health up, but needs have some strategy for those enemies he can't drain blood from.
Pros:
Vampirism lets your drain health from Animals, Demons and Others, giving health equal to 2 + 100%, 60% and 40% of your Health Regeneration stat, respectively. It also deals damage equal to what it drains in Necromantic damage, gives 2 Necromantic resist (a common damage type) and lets you harvest health from corpses (all corpses), stun and drain health from enemies with your sparklies, drain MP on top of HP and turn into a Batty for quick escapes (or if you want to drown for that achievement.)
Cons:
You cannot eat food or heal naturally. This is a much bigger con than you might think, especially on earlier levels with hard hitting constructs and veggies, like DLs 3 and 4. Also, the skill line is only five levels long, and while the abilities are powerful the last two will not be of use to everyone.
Synergies:
Vampirism loves any skill that boosts Health Regen. Look into Tourist, Communism (also great for the healing ability and the invisibility), Master of Arms, Shield Bearer or yes, even Veganism. While keeping your health drain up is important it's even more important to keep Drinker of the Dead refilling you as much as possible. Smithing also lets you craft the excellent Emerald Encrusted Gold Ring and Piracy will give you the gems while giving you mad countering skills, or Alchemy will transmute the gems while also providing emergency healing. Fungal Arts will destroy a lot of valuable corpses over the course of the game, but does provide mushrooms as well. Necronomiceconomics loves anything with Necro resist and provides you with a second layer of health drain from the Pact of Fleeting Life spell. Finally, Viking Magic and Egyptian Magic both love the Psychic Vampire ability in conjunction with their hungry buffs.
Takeaway:
Vampirism is powerful but limited. On the other hand, you can do so many crazy things with its synergies the play experience entirely makes up for it. With a little thinking about the above, most players should be able to build a Vampire that they'll enjoy, even if you don't want to take the skill every time.

 

WARNING!​

Be aware that we are about to talk about that crazy, whacked up part of the game known as Mod Skills. Some people don't like mods. They think they're cheating, or they make the game to complicated or they just aren't as fun or something.

These People Are Crazy - but entitled to their opinion

Basically, if you don't want to read about Mod Skills, this is not the part of the Community Skill Guide that is for you. If you do, read on! Be aware that, while I want to look at Mod Skills, the near-infinite variety of mods makes covering them all difficult and knowing all the potential synergies between them almost impossible. Therefore when noting synergies I'll only note those between a mod and official GLG content that everyone is likely to be familiar with. Others are free to chime in.

That said, why start small when you could go big?

Mod Skill
Ruigi's Runecaster
Type: Wizard
Role: Yes
Runecaster is just about anything you want it to be. Seriously.
Theme: The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword, Provided Your Pen Is Actually A N-Dimensional Lathe
Strategy:
Amass letters until you can win through the power of superior vocabulary. Basically, this tree does all its casting outside of combat and then throws its spells into combat! Pretty exciting stuff.
Mechanics:
This tree introduces a crapton of new recipes to the n-Dimensional Lathe. Each level gives you a spell that creates runes, which are the base ingredients for these new recipes. When crafted together the result are thrown weapons that cast spells of various types. Typically they leave a rune on the floor, although other times they leave pillars of stone or other things.
Pros:
This spell tree quite literally lets you do just about anything. It's actually kind of sickening. Knockback, healing, obstructing terrain, buffing the player, you name it this tree does it. Sometimes the diversity is overwhelming. Higher levels of runewords result in truly absurd effects.
Cons:
First and foremost, Runecasting is rune crafting. All the cons noted about other crafting skills also apply here. Yes, pocket dimension blah blah. Long story short, I know this is an issue for some people. Be advised. Moving on.
Creating runes is expensive. You will need lots of mana to use this tree. Worse, the rune you get is random, and certain runes are required by a lot of recipes. You'll probably have huge piles of unused runes as you cast over and over to try and get that one rune you actually need. This can be frustrating. Also, the fact that this creates magical consumables means you can easily run out of the one you need at a specific moment and wind up totally shafted (assuming one of your other Rune Words can't save your bacon, which they probably can, so this is less of a problem than you might think).
Synergies:
This skill eats mana. Magic Training, Blood Magic, Ley Walker all are huge helps. Vampirism loves the healing and funnels more mana into you. Throwing, Pole Arms and pretty much anything else that makes thrown weapons more effective helps Runewords that are also throwing weapons. Finally, Alchemy lets you upgrade booze and make mana potions, both of which you may want to do. A lot. Boosting your overall MP reserve and magic power is nice, too.
Takeaway:
Runecaster looks very intimidating. It's definitely not for the first time player. But it is a blast to play. If you're put off by just how many spells there are to get and keep track of, try this: Load the mod but don't select the skill. Simply buy Rune Crunch cereal whenever it's available, eat it when you need a few HP, and experiment with the resulting Rune Words. Note that they have their spellings written in their descriptions. With this, you can become familiar with what you need to craft Rune Words as well as what they do a little bit at a time. When it comes time to actually play with the skill it will be more like a sale on the cereal aisle than starting over from scratch.

 

No Fleshsmithing?!

The healing effect of Knit Tissue is extremely strong, and it comes at level 2 (some kind of out-of-combat healing skill is obligatory for vampires IMO, and you want it ASAP). I know some players dislike Meatshield, but the bonus of 4 it grants is absolutely huge for vampires.

Egyptian Magic also gives a solid amount of .

 

Runcasting needs to be overhauled. Not sure if/when i'll get around to doing this.

 

Can I ask you why do you think this?

 

because there are things i could do that would make the skill easier to use/better.

one simple thing would be for me to change the spawn rune spells so that they are automatically picked up, or make it possible to choose which runes are spawned.

 

I thought that those "2 runes = 1 different rune" recipes where there to cancel this problem.

 

Hey, nobody's perfect. Forgot both of those. But then, that's what I have you guys for, right?

 

Respectfully, I disagree with this sentiment. Runecrafter is already such a build-in-a-single-skill that making it easier -- especially by removing the randomness -- would be like adding a bunch of combat powers to Burglary. Runecrafter needs to be toned down, not made easier.

 

The damage numbers on the rune spells are a bit unbalanced. That's not difficult to fix. I'm more worried about the repetitive actions and inventory headaches that come with managing multiple runes. I'd rather give the player the ability to pick exactly which rune they wanted rather than randomly spawning/transmuting the rune they want.

 

Then again, inventory management is part of it too, and there are means of storing momentarily unneeded runes now so it's not that much of a bother.
If anything, that is the price of the skill. One sort of versatility traded for another one.

 

My problem was never with the damage numbers -- it's with the sheer do-everything-ness of the skill. Even if all of the damage numebers were halved, I'd still take Runecaster just for the healing rune, the stone wall rune, the two teleport runes, and the blossom rune. A single skill tree that can plug the door to a Zoo and then heal you to full before the plug goes away is a skill tree that everyone can use -- and that only requires 2 levels of investment!

If you got to pick and choose what runes you got when you cast, i'd basically never craft any level 1 runes except healing, and any level 2 runes except stone wall, and I'd take Runecaster with every melee beast I created that had an extra skill slot. Too much predictability would take away from the skill. It would also obviate the whole 'use the alchemy box to turn one rune into another kind of rune' thing.

 

Funny synergies with Runecasting: anything that improves Throwing damage improves the damage that your runes do when you throw them. Throwing skill, Melee Power, Unarmed skill, Wandcrafting's bonus and other similar exotic damage granted by skills or equipment -- they all make runecasting potent in an entirely different way.

 

I thought that the high mana cost to make runewords and the randomness were just part of the balance of its big capacities.
And anyway there is pocket dimension to juggle with your enormous number of runes.

 

The Runecaster skillset was added before the pocket dimension by a long time. It is somewhat more broken with the help of a PD vault to hold all your stuff safely.

*Edit* It was January 22nd. So just shy of a year ago.
http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/runecaster-mod-craft-runes-and-destroy-your-enemies.2283/

 

Mod Skill
RaustBlackDragon's Swift Striker
Type: Warrior
Role: Turbocharger
Swift Striker is all about keeping the warrior in melee combat, where most of his skills and abilities are most relevant.
Theme: *this theme is an onomatopoeia for things moving very quickly, then getting cut in half*
Strategy:
Hit them in the face and never let them get away!
Mechanics:
This tree is all about teleportation. But it's a warrior skill, so it's all about teleporting to your enemies, as opposed to away from them, like most people use teleports for.
Pros:
If you've ever seen anime you're familiar with the vanishing earth trick (called many other things) where a character suddenly covers a huge chunk of ground and smacks the other guy a good one in the face. Swift Striker let's you do that in DoD! This serves two very awesome purposes: It makes you feel good about yourself and it lets you instantly close on annoying spellcasting enemies without having to get hit in the face five or six dozen times in the process. In addition to providing you with two powerful teleporting attacks, Swift Striker also makes you Bolt Proof, which basically lets you soak up magic attacks until you hit someone, Shoulder Bash, which lets you work your way out of being surrounded, and Quick Step, good for snagging island goodies or just grabbing enough breathing room to chug a potion. Good stuff all around.
Cons:
The cooldowns on your attacks are significant, and other than that, Swift Striker is not a huge helper to damage. As a result, it's limited entirely to the role of Turbocharger (although Jump could be a payload in some people's minds, I don't find it strong enough to be one.)
Synergies:
Swift Striker scales most of its attacks off of melee power, so anything that gives you a lot of that (Blacksmithing, Dual Wielding, Berserk Rage, Battle Geologist, ect) will help you out. Also, since all of its "spells" actually count as attacks, a high crit rate will help them hit through blocks and do more damage on clean hits, so consider Assassination and Axes as well. Maces and Polearms follow with the battlefield control aspects of the skill
Takeaway:
Swift Striker fills a particular niche in the Warrior archetype, but one that DoD does not address and which some players may still want. If you ever want to play the fast moving, high flying wuxia master, this might be part of what you want. On the other hand, Swift Striker is very linear and it's applications don't change much with your build. It's not going to go everywhere...

 

I think it ought to be "to your enemies" instead of "too your enemies". Other than that good job, Lorrelian.

 

Good catch! Fixed.