Project: Community Skills Guide

The question is not would it be OP, but rather how much. is supposed to bypass resistances after all.

I tend not to worry about , because by the time I need it I usually have more than enough of it.

 

Hrmm. I don't think haywire would be OP, but it would be nice if haywire acted more like a crit, and there was some kind of stat parallel to EDR for magic resistance.

 

True, but that's about the only ability in the tree that finds Magic Training worthwhile (unless you've found some crazy useful way to spam Solar Inscription) and will remain that way until someone finds a way to make buffs scalar. And on the whole, TSA is not the best AoE nuke available. In fact, I've never used it more than once or twice. It's high damage is mitigated by its unwieldy shape. The damage is nice vs. Dredmor, though.

I actually agree with you almost 100% here. Magic Training is always my first choice as a mage support skill, I just haven't heard it mentioned much on the forums, so I thought it might be underappreciated and wrote from that perspective. That said, I've had Viking Magic gish builds that went with Ley Line Walker and nothing else. So, like you, I don't rate it that way every time.

Why wouldn't formal training make you more likely to set up domino reactions to overcome opponents defenses? True, the name haywire sounds random, but randomness can be worked around if you have enough skill. I don't think a Haywire skill would necessarily be overpowered given the current functioning of Haywire anymore than Perception's huge EDR bonuses make that skill a must have. On the other hand, a Wild Magic skill needs something more than Haywire to back it. Essential Skill Packs approach, random spells, is one option, the other might be a small chance of getting buff that boosts (or penalizes) magic power for a few turns. If Gaslamp was considering adding their own Wild Magic type skill...

 

IIRC, the Essential version of Wild Magic has a level that grants a pretty obscene Haywire boost. (It was originally going to have a 100% Wild Blast trigger on haywire, but I'm saving that for sometime next year when I can convince Nicholas to code up the trigger on haywire/resist/reflect thingies. ) So far, of all of the things people have said were OP about Wild Magic (which have since been fixed), the boost to Haywire was totally not one of them.

 

Well that's probably because haywire is broken and does nothing but ignore resist.

 

It's broken? What's it supposed to do other than ignore resist?

 

I honestly have no idea, Essence. I though that is what it was supposed to do.

I think it was supposed to be a magic equivalent of critical, but doubling magic power or stuff like that is a pretty silly concept.

 

I just like to hear the HAYYWHARRRR audio go off. When a caster, I'm never really concerned about anything other than my mana reserves. Everything will be purged by flame sooner or later.

 

+1 Internets for that epic rendition of Announcer Guy's Haywire.

 

Man, a whole Internet just for rendering Haywire well. D'ya think I could get a few for my version of a dial-up modem connecting?

On a related note, today's skill is Perception! Note that this is based on the YHTNTEP (or whatever) version of the skill, and since it's free and available from the IRC channel, there's no reason for you not to have it!

Perception
Type: Rogue
Role: Fuel Tank
Perception helps you hang on to resources and use them more efficiently
Theme: Find a Penny, Pick It Up
Strategy:
Perception is all about mini-maxing. It maxes out your chances of finding useful resources. It boosts your ability to deal out resources at the right time. It makes you more resilient and protects you from traps. It's a handy skill, with more power than people think.
Pros:
+10 and +15 for starters. By reducing the hits you take by 10% above and beyond normal, Perception makes for a great Rogue survival skill, but it really shines with Warriors or Mages who will have much lower dodge chances. While Artful Dodger gives more raw dodge, it doesn't give something else those archetypes are really lacking in as well: Trap Sight. Which is all you really need to avoid traps effectively. Sure, you can get the same (or really, better) results from Burglary and Dodger together, but if you're not playing a rogue you might not want to spend the slots on it.
The ability to purge invisibility, buff your sight radius and dodge even more, and make free exotic ranged attacks is a nice bonus. But most of all, the Lucky Find proc and its cousins give every build a chance to find items that will benefit it that don't always spawn in the dungeon at all. A real boon to all archetypes.
Cons:
Like many rogue skills, Perception does little to answer the game's most pressing question: How will I kill that? (For values of "that" which can range from "sickly diggle" to "ancient conniving lich" and include a number even stranger things inbetween, like Footies.) Many of the good things about the skill can be gotten from other skill lines at a higher power level, albeit at the expense of taking up more skills. And it really doesn't wow you.
Synergies:
Perception provides a lot of solid raw crafting material, so crafting skills will get a lot of use out of the Lucky Find drops. The boosted vision area is a real bonus for casters, bowmen and throwers... who are shooting horizontally. It has much less impact on the game vertically. Burglars who spend a lot of time invisible will likewise enjoy the sight boosts.
Takeaway:
An excellent skill for the warrior or mage who is looking to get all the basic benefits of rogue skills without committing two or three skills to that archetype.

 

How could you taunt so Lorr :*(

Or has a Mac version been released that I hadn't kept up with?

 

Ah, I forgot 'bout that. Sorry, no Mac version as far as I know.

The Essential Skills rebalance gives much the same benefits, IIRC.

 

Perception, my darling. How I love you. I was so happy when I learned that the GLGods had adopted my 'pet tweak' that I literally cried. So, let's see how the skill fares nowadays:

Level 1: Superhuman Perception. 5 EDR, 1 Sight Radius, and a 5% chance on kill to find one item off of the Lucky Find list (below). Notables include Leather Boots, Leather Cap (two crafting ingredients that are very easy to miss out on, especially in NTTG) Cheese, Sliced Bread, (hello!) and Steel Ingots. Even without putting any points into it, Perception helps out all of the craft skills with small doses of useful components.

Level 2: 5 Dodge, 1 Sight, 1 Trapsight, and another 5% chance on kill to trigger Lucky Find, for a rough total of 9%, and rare opportunities to get 2 Finds off of one body.

Level 3: 5 more Dodge, 1 more Sight, 1 more Trapsight, and 2 points of Trap Affinity. Even if you get nothing else, those 2 points of Trap Affinity are enough to disarm half the traps in the first 3 levels of the game, which can mean a lot of spare XP. Also adds 5% chance to trigger Luckier Find, which adds potent new findables like Potions of Healing, Black Pearls, and Diggle Eggs to the mix. At this point, even strictly non-crafters will enjoy their finds if for nothing other that great selling material.

Level 4: 5 more EDR, 1 Sight, 1 Trapsight. At this point, you should be seeing traps so far before you step on them that you can start manipulating monsters into stepping on them instead, which is a surprisingly good tactic in the lower levels (and even better once they fix those damned Blink Traps). 5% more to get a Luckier Find brings up up to about 9% on average, or a total of about 19% to find something on each kill.

Level 5: 5 more EDR (mostly useless except when you reach Dredmor), 1 Sight, and a completely pointless spell that reveals invisible stuff. But since you can see invisible stuff at your Trapsight radius, which is already at least 3 by now, it's basically redundant. 5% to trigger Luckiest Find, however, is phat and all that, giving you occasional drops like Potions of Invisibility, Hordratic Lutefisk Cubes, Hand Grenades, and added Trap Affinity in the form of Trappers Toolbelts and Thieves' Gloves.

Level 6: Eye Lasers. A 32-downtime nuke that delivers decent blasting, conflagratory, and aethereal damage (a nice mix, by the way, few monsters have resistances to all three), sets the target on fire, and leaves a small fire burning in their square. The damage scales to Sight Radius, so you have at least a nominal reason to be happy it you find any further Sight-enhancing gear, though generally the 5 points you get from Perception should be enough.


All told, as Lorr said, it's an amazing tree for characters low on Rogue skills, and for crafters. The EDR is a bit extreme for a Rogue -- you usually won't need it all -- but the Dodge is welcome for absolutely everyone.

Code:

<spell name="Lucky Find" type="self"> 
<effect type="spawnitemfromlist">
<option name="Aqua Vitae"/>
<option name="Aqua Regia"/>
<option name="Aqua Fortis"/>
<option name="Burnt Out Wand"/>
<option name="Leather Boots"/>
<option name="Silver Ring"/>
<option name="Gold Ring"/>
<option name="Platinum Ring"/> 
<option name="Night Cap"/>
<option name="Fairywodger"/>
<option name="Inky Hoglantern"/>
<option name="Sewer Brew"/>
<option name="Cheese"/>
<option name="Plastic Ingot"/>
<option name="Steel Ingot"/>
<option name="Rough Iron Sword"/>
<option name="Rough Iron Mace"/>
<option name="Rough Iron Axe"/>
<option name="Sliced Bread"/>
<option name="Leather Cap"/>
</effect>
</spell>

<spell name="Luckier Find" type="self"> 
<effect type="spawnitemfromlist">
<option name="Acidium Salis"/>
<option name="Oil of Vitriol"/>
<option name="Potion of Mana"/>
<option name="Potion of Healing"/>
<option name="Sapphire"/>
<option name="Diamond"/>
<option name="Bituminous Coal"/>
<option name="Black Pearl"/> 
<option name="Pyrite Sun"/>
<option name="Diggle Egg"/>
<option name="Greedy Blungecap"/>
<option name="Potion of Purity"/>
<option name="Rough Steel Sword"/>
<option name="Rough Steel Mace"/>
<option name="Rough Steel Axe"/>
<option name="Bronze Ingot"/>
<option name="Brass Ingot"/>
<option name="Electrum Ingot"/>
<option name="Spring-loaded Power Core"/>
<option name="Voltaic Cell"/>
</effect>
</spell>

<spell name="Luckiest Find" type="self"> 
<effect type="spawnitemfromlist">
<option name="Potion of Restoration"/>
<option name="Hand Grenade"/>
<option name="Nzappa Zap"/>
<option name="Potion of Healing"/>
<option name="Steel Sword"/>
<option name="Steel Mace"/>
<option name="Steel Axe"/>
<option name="Emerald"/> 
<option name="Ruby"/>
<option name="Hordratic Lutefisk Cube"/>
<option name="Acid Flask"/>
<option name="Steel Ingot"/>
<option name="Potion of Invisibility"/>
<option name="Dire Sandwich"/>
<option name="Acid Bottle Bolt"/>
<option name="Firey Wand"/>
<option name="Kilt"/>
<option name="Thieving Gloves"/>
<option name="Dandy Black Velvet Boots"/>
<option name="Trapper's Toolbelt"/>
</effect>
  </spell>[code]

 

Just a reminder to please make it easier on me by not including emoticons that I have to replace with actual words for the PDF version. It's time consuming. ;_;

Psionics
Type: Wizard
Role: Engine or Fuel Tank
Psionics can carry the bulk of your run and keep your most important resource, HP, at full between almost every combat.
Theme: Mind Over Matter
Strategy:
Psionics is all about maxing out secondary spell effects to help you reach your goals. Magic Power is not as important to Psionics as it is other spell lines.
Pros:
Psionics is a great wizard skill for non-wizard characters. The sleep, shove, heal, paralysis and charm effects all do their thing without caring about your Magic Power, and for the most part costs scale downwards very quickly. 36 HP healed for 3 MP over 9 turns is pretty good, even if it won't help you much in the middle of clearing a zoo. The big secret is, Psionics is also a great skill for actual wizards. Narcosomatic Induction is a damage spell on the first level. While it won't be very useful past the first DL, the work it does on that floor is more than enough to get you to better spells. The shove and healing are useful for everyone and the Nerve Staple/Pyrokinesis combo is top notch single target damage for only 8 mana at cheapest.
Cons:
The capstone is junk. Charmed monsters don't aggro other monsters like summons do, so they're useless as a distraction, and after DL 7 magic resistance is high enough that it will fail most of the time, unless you Haywire is something really special. In fact, you need a lot of haywire for spells other than Pyrokinesis and Crystal Healing to be useful on lower levels at all, one factor in weakening this skill for non-mages. The skill has no AoE outside of the shove, which scales slowly and deals Blasting damage, which AA will reduce.
Synergies:
Great with Mathemagics for an incredible Kite which will fear zoos with a great fear. Take Magic Training for your Turbocharging needs, the savvy will bottom out spell costs and pump Haywire to make sure your secondary spell effects actually, y'know, effect. Skills that leave damage fields, like Promethean Magic and Emomancy, like the ability to shove people back into the damage zone. All spell trees love Nerve Staple's Magic Resistance debuff.
Takeaway:
Psionics is a great toolbox that can power you through most early situations, but beware relying on it as you get deeper. The middle floors particularly, where magic resistance is high but your haywire has a way to go yet, will need something else to carry you through. Also, the skill is entirely almost useless against Dredmor himself, as he resists both Fire and Existentialism at respectable amounts.

 

Nerve Staple does but grants the target thereafter. So while it's a good debuff, subsequent castings on the same monster don't zap the nearly as much. Spread the lovin' around, don't go steady. Also, if you pick up a solid Chest of Evil weapon that does a big chunk of it's damage via , you may have to reign in your stapling.

 

The biggest strengths of Psionics are the abilities on the low end of the skill tree. They are very very useful and will keep you alive for half the game. Shove will remain useful until the bitter end. Staple is useful when you do not want to aggravate a whole bunch of monsters, but need to take one out of the fight for a few turns at any expense.

The healing is weak, but it is reliable when you have some room to work with and time to recuperate mana. Despite what Lorrelian said above, I think that Psionic Fire is useful against Dredmor. He is immune to the actual damage it directly does, but he can be set aflame from it and that does more damage than it ever should do. If you lack Promethean then setting him aflame with this is the best thing you can do. Then you can basically use any sort of antimagic on him and spam Shove to keep him from dangerous melee range and just be certain to reflame him as needed.

In short, Psionics is the ultimate catch all ability tree. It only lacks a few minor things. It does not do anything better than other skills, but it does most everything you will need in the game. Sadly it does piss for damage from the single AoE spell, Psionic Shove. But it costs almost nothing and can usually be cast every turn if you are careful. This makes it a way to stay alive for really, really cheap.

I have used Shove to keep a zoo from swarming me while I heal with impunity. This no-longer works when you have casting opponents, but a summon will almost negate the chance of anyone casting at you.

 

One thing that wasn't mentioned was making a Gish character and using Nerve Staple once you're in melee range for 2 free hits (assuming it isn't resisted).

Since, as was mentioned, the entire tree doesn't require high Magic Power to function, it works well as a melee-supplementing skill set: you have your healing spell (crystals), your way to get at Island Artifacts (shove), two ways to get mobs out of your face in a pinch (shove and staple), a way to get free, counter-attack-proof attacks in (nerve staple) and a way to do a % damage of a monster's health over time (firestarter).

All in all, a very useful tree that will carry you through the first eight floors or so, but then begins to wane heavily as you get deeper down in the dungeon and monster health pools and resistances start to balloon.

 

Shoulda posted this yesterday, but I forgot. =/

Skill for today is Viking Magic. We've still got a lot of mage skills to go, mainly because there are more of them than anything else, so we'll be doing wizard type stuff for a little while.

Viking Magic
Type: Wizard
Role: Engine, Turbocharger or Payload
Viking magic is the Gish (melee mage) base skill. It makes that role easier in just about every respect, both providing the driving force and excellent support skills. Or you can wait until the end to level it up, and just nuke people.
Theme: Hail Odin!
Strategy:
Use DoTs to manage enemies so you can fight them one on one!
Pros:
Viking Magic offers a pair of powerful DoTs that will be useful in the early game and some buffs/debuffs that you can use as a Gish to stay alive. Thor's Fulminaric Bolt is probably the most powerful single target damage spell in the game, and it has a nice splash effect too. The most important spells are Skatha's Roots, which can tack down enemies so you're not overwhelmed, Power of Magic Steel, which will make the first floor much easier and the stun proc gives it relevance on later floors, and Thor's Fulminaric Bolt, which will flat out kill whatever you point it a very quickly. Hand of Belwimar is nice for Gishes as well.
Cons:
Arctic Vortex doesn't offer much. Most undead are highly resistant to its damage, as is everything on DL7, and there's the fact that DoTs do sod all when they're resisted, which is frequent on later floors (barring haywire). Hand of Belwimar is really only useful to a Gish, and even then it's not as good as Magic Steel. No critical bonus and burning isn't that useful to a person already in melee, it's far to slow. The raw damage is kinda nice, but maybe not worth the mana investment. Unholy warcry is weak in that the penalties it gives aren't really meaningful and the other status effects will, as is so often the case on later floor, be resisted.
Synergies:
Viking Magic actually does best with some warrior and rogue skills backing it up. While it likes Magic Power, particularly for the Bolt, it doesn't really need it to do what it does, so gish play is a real possibility for Viking mages. Astrology also pushes this theme. The right Necronomiceconomics build will too. But the most amusing skills to pair with Viking Magic are Assassination and Berserk Rage. (I stun him! He falls asleep! THAT MAKES ME SO ANGRY!)
Takeaway:
Viking Magic is great for a gish, provides some decent early game options for a true wizard, and is a menace to anyone at later levels. Even Dredmor can't eat Thor's Bolts all day, and hey, they say that payback is good for the soul...

 

Viking Magic is a key skill for a gish: melee buffs and procs, lockdown, and stunning AoE are important. The damage is immaterial, really: it's the stun and lockdown you care about. Stuns allow you to fight who you want when you want to, and the lockdown on Skatha's roots allows you to hold down dangerous monsters so you can pelt them to death safely.

Viking Magic's biggest problem is that most of the good parts of it are replicated elsewhere: fulminaric bolt can be replicated with a narwhaand, magic steel mostly by a wand of Tesla, Skatha's roots by banzai bombs.

 

Viking is kinda a meh spell tree to me, but it does have uses. The first spell can make any build clear the first floor no problem. That means builds that relay on high level skills can have the time to prepare. Artic wind is just terrible. I think cold resist is the most common exotic resist that enemies have and that just 1-2 resist makes the spell do near nothing. The hold skill is good but by this time burglary could have a hold skill for no mana. I never used the shout for anything. The fire melee spell is worse than the lightning melee spell. The last spell is awesome. It is the highest damaging spell I believe. Too bad you have to get the rest of the tree first.