Another quick mod from me. Arcanist is primarily a support skill with some damage options; damage from Arcanist is either 1) unreliable or 2) mana - inefficient. The skill hopes to benefit players who maintain control over their mana resources, and provides some tools to help with that. Have fun, and please report any bugs and the like! I'm not too sure whether Thaumogenic Cleansing is working 100% as intended, but if you find any problems with corruption removal, please let me know. *** Changelog: v0.41 -Bugfix: Skill should now grant archetype levels properly. *** Level 0: Cornucopia "Studying at magic school was tough. So tough, in fact, that you never really had the time to nip down to the store on campus. Good thing you found a way around that by conjuring food and drink out of thin air." *1 1 *320 turn cooldown. *Summons 8 danishes and 8 botles of merlot. Level 1: Arcane Missile "Fire an arcane missile off into the darkness! The effect is stable most of the time, but sometimes you get more, sometimes you get less..." *1 1 *5-16 cost. * Fires a missile that on impact, has: -20% chance to deal (2+0.4) and (1+0.2) -60% chance to deal (6+0.6) and (3+0.3) -20% chance to deal (10+0.8) and (5+0.4) Level 2: Counterspell "'My magic is more potent than yours, and I can prove it!' With your general-purpose counterspell, you can prevent enemies from casting for a while and slightly reduce their resistances to your magic." *1 5 1 *15 flat cost. *Silences an enemy for 15 turns and debuffs by -7 -7 -3. Level 3: Arcane Blast "Blast your enemies with raw arcane power! With each consecutive casting of this spell (up to four times), it becomes far more potent in both damage and area of effect, but all mana costs skyrocket.." *1 *10-30 cost. -First cast: *Single-target. *Triggers buff of two rounds for -10 3 5, consumes previous buff. Deals (2+0.2*) (2+0.2*) (2+0.1*) -Second cast: *Template 9 *Triggers buff of two rounds for -25 7 13, consumes previous buff. Epicenter deals (2+0.4*) (2+0.4*) (2+0.2*) AoE deals (2+0.2*) (2+0.2*) (2+0.1*) -Third cast: *Template 20 *Triggers buff of two rounds for -45 12 23, consumes previous buff. Epicenter deals (2+0.6*) (2+0.6*) (2+0.3*) AoE deals (2+0.3*) (2+0.3*) (2+0.3*) -Fourth cast: *Template 12 *Consumes previous buff. Epicenter deals (2+0.8*) (2+0.8*) (2+0.4*) AoE deals (2+0.4*) (2+0.4*) (2+0.4*) Level 4: Create Mana Gem "Create a gem to store away some of your mana for later! Using the gem will fry your energies a little due to the surge of power, but better that than running dry, eh?" *5 1 1 *50 flat cost. *Creates a mana gem that restores 33 and debuffs -2 for 50 rounds. Stacks five times, cannot be decursed. Level 5: Supercharge "Through rigorous mental training and yelling like a madman for a total of three episodes, you can supercharge yourself for six turns and gain ultimate wizard power! Be forewarned, though - mortals were not made to hold such energies, and you lose everything at the end of it all." *1 1 1 *96 turn cooldown. *6 turn duration of infinite mana and 10 10. *Drains all mana at the end of 6 turns. Level 6: Arcane Reflux "You've discovered a way to trim the waste from your spells, refluxing any mana that would have been lost back into useful energies. While this buff is active, every spell you cast has a chance to release a small blast of mana about its target. Handle with care around shopkeepers." *1 1 1 *Buff, upkeep of 1 mana per 2 rounds. *When active, 33% chance on any spellcast to trigger a small aoe (template 10) about the target which deals (2+0.2*) (2+0.2*) (2+0.2*) . Level 7: Thaumogenic Cleansing "You've become so adept at mana manipulation that you can reverse-engineer what makes your artifacts tick and weed out corruption in them, at the cost of some mana." *2 1 1 *72 turn cooldown. *Removes corruption. *Drains 50% of mana when used.
Once I manage to get Teslan Bard working, I'm gonna try a build with that and this. Because it looks like they'd synergize in interesting ways. By which I mean, with Teslan's capstone costing a base 100 mana, Supercharge would be godly.
I don't know why, but this skill isn't giving me levels. As in, I started this run with six bars instead of seven and when I put in a skill point I have the same number of bars on my list of Wizard levels as I did before I used the point. Edit: Also, Cornucopia's cooldown never expires.
That explains the cooldown, but not the lack of leveling. I'm gonna check real quick to make sure the latter's consistent. Edit: Yep, took the skill in 3 games, and it didn't contribute any wizard, warrior, or rogue levels in any of the games. And it appears to only be this skill that's doing this.
Well, you're right. I have no idea what's going on with this build, let me run this through the validator and see what it spits out...
I realized that I wasn't using the most recent version; I had version .3 and not .4. So I downloaded .4...and it was still causing the bug. I've got no more idea than you do about what's going on. I tried capitalizing "skillName" and removing the <arcanistskill> tag; neither did anything, and I can't see anything else that looks significantly different from my own WIP mod (which does have working skill levels) other than perhaps the order of a few of the parameters. Putting points into the skill works just fine, it's only the receiving levels part that's borked.
I know. It passed validation on the validator, too, and looks no different from all my other mods. It was working just fine before the patch, too. Let me change it up to IDs (although RW, BK and Witcher all use skillnames and seem to be working fine) and get back to you on that. Edit: What. The. F###. Just changing the skillname made it work. Apparently somehow, skillnames starting with "a" are not liked by the game. Reporting instantly.
You check to make sure it's not just that the word "Arcanist" is specifically becoming magically invalid? Like, does using "Awcanist" work? Edit: Yeah, checked myself and it does appear to be the letter "A" specifically doing this. Astounding. Edit again: It is NOT the letter "A". "Brcanist" doesn't work either.
As far as I understand the way skillname works (as it was explained), it converts the text string to a skillID somehow. Maybe something's bugging it out, I don't know. In any case, it's probably something only the devs can deal with.
Hello there, long time lurker and first time poster here. Now I'm not sure if this thread is dead or not so in case I'm necroing it I'd like to say that I'm sorry beforehand. Long story short I looooooove playing as a spellcaster in DoD, that and Werediggle that is, and I recently decided to look at mods. After spending a bit of time experimenting with mods that were either horribly bugged or had art that made my poor innocent eyes bleed fluids that I wasn't even aware the human body could produce (seriously, it was green!) I finally stumpled upon your mod and it had it all. It was an "Arcane Wizard"'ish skill with an empasis on mana that made you feel like a wizard AND it had custom artwork that actually looked like it fit into the game: Hells yea! ... Then I played with it for a while and my excitement quickly faded. I was quite litterally one-shotting everything on floor 1 and the monsters on floor 2-4 (Going Rogue, Permadeath AND No Time to Grind) didn't poccess much of a challenge either as I spammed Magic Missile like a loonie, which I got away with thanks to Cornucopia. Seriously, it's a bonkers skill and not in a fun way. It's kind of obvious why now that I look at the stats for each skill and compare them to what's in the core game. Magic Missile deals way more damage than Deathly Hex for instance and even scales better, with no real drawbacks other than a 20% chance to do about as much damage as a Deathly hex I might add. Heck, the stat increases you get with each level only add to the issue of balance as you gain roughly the same amount of stats as you would've gained with Magic Training, Alchemy or Wand Lore. Overall it's an AMAZING mod but it's way too powerful for it's own good. I, for one, play DoD because I want a casual and fun challenge, not because I want to munchkin my way to victory and I just cant justify picking it because it's so rediculously powerful when compared to the competition so... umm, if you ever get around to fiddle around with it I'd highly recommend, and even moreso appriciate, balancing it. A good place to start would be at the first two skills as they effeciently wreck everything that comes your way, Magic Missile in particular, aswell as either completely removing or greatly decrease the passive stat boosts. Maybe 1 additional Mana per level would be sufficient? Anywho, that was my two cents.
Thanks for the feedback. *Cornucopia cooldown is being reworked, probably doubled. Mana regeneration from Cornucopia is no stronger (and probably weaker, in terms of regeneration/turn) than Ley Walker's Thaumatheurgic Tap. I feel fine with it. *Deathly hex starts at 6 mana maximum and has a scaling of 0.4, 0.3 of which is health drain from any monster taxa. I am looking at the damage stats again and there will be nerfs in terms of minimum mana costs and/or damage, but there's more behind the scenes than one imagines there to be than just raw damage. *Level stat bonuses are there to stay. Edit: There, reworked on my internal build. I'll go playtest later.
Actually my primary beef was with Magic Missile and it's, quite frankly, pretty ridiculous damage output which considering it's skill level and mana cost was simply devastatingly powerful. Think Promethean Magic back in the olden days. As for Cornucopia the issue, while not as crucial at all, was and is that it effectively removes the entire food/booze scavenging aspect of the game. Admitted that's not that problematic seeing how the Tourist skill does the same thing... although Cornucopia does it better, dosen't cost you anything,nets you a passive stat boost and is a level 0 skill. But if you're feeling secure about the skill then you're feeling secure about the skill, personally I'd either change the conjured item into something weaker or reduce the quantity but that's your decision. Regarding the stat bonuses, well, I'll just recommend that you compare them to the other skills in the game and ask yourself wether you want Arcanist to outmatch everything else or not. It may just be a mod but it still has to follow the rules of basic game design, like keeping the player challenged and not outclassing everything else. Obligatory smiley to make it perfectly obvious that I'm offering constructive critisism and not just complaining: - Seriously, I love the mod but christ it's imbalanced in it's currect state. :/
*Leyline Siphoning is a level 1 skill and grants 24 mana on a 30 turn cooldown, or 5/6 mana per turn. Cornucopia in its current incarnation restores 136 mana over 480 turns, assuming you drink all the booze. That's about 3/10 mana per turn. Assuming you throw in the value of food as well for another 1/6 health a turn, it's still not as much raw points/turn as Leyline Siphoning. In terms of points, the skill gives no more than the weapon skills or MoA at lower levels (less, in the case of weapon skills levels which give no activatable ability. High levels in a skill (>5) should be rewarded with slightly increased gains. Also, remember that base stats on their own in small amounts do practically nothing, due to the formulas used to calculate secondary stats. I subscribe to the Essence theory of balance, and my skills tend to be balanced against the Essential Skills Pack rather than the vanilla game, some of which are woefully underpowered (piracy, vampirism, all weapon skills). In short, I'm fine with it.
Well, seeing how you're fine with those things I reckon that's that. Although it should be mentioned that in terms of gameplay underpowering something can create gameplay whereas overpowering something mostly result in a loss of gameplay. In this case it removed it from my test run seeing how nothing possed a threat to my character at all. Now chances are that I'm the god king of DoD but I kinda doubt that and Going Rogue is still Going Rogue so it must've been something else. Thing is that the game has a balance curve and while it is slightly flimsy it's still there and breaking it effectively breaks the game, thusly turning a challenge into a sleep inducing endavor. Which isn't fun and makes the skill less appealing rather than more. Anywho, those were my observations and as mentioned before the only really broken things about the skill as a whole are Magic Missile and the stats, that you won't touch. I'll be looking forward to whatever else you come up with in the future.
I won't touch the stats, but Magic Missile has been reworked slightly to do less damage and cost more base mana. Again, thanks for sounding out.
