The problem I have is that I cannot really count them all. It costs a fair chunk of mana to get them up, and keeping them up is not so problematic so long as I find plenty of booze and fungus to help offset the expense. I may play for two hundred turns and then think "Was my at 40 or was it 43?" And so I waste more mana casting a few basic wards, followed by a major ward and then another minor ward since the major costs a minor to cast. Then I look at my again. Since the basic and major wards add 2 and 3 respectively, I should be able to determine quickly what wards I have up and what have collapsed. But I am lazy and forget. And Hulu complicates this too since it uses the same 3 . So would make more sense. I look at Barrier Maiden as a defensive skill only. The proc that consumes a ward to deal damage is not what I want from it. I could edit that out myself, but I figured you may appreciate hearing what difficulties I experience with it. When I encounter certain monsters as a squishy caster, I switch from high armors to higher resistance and armors. Switching out equipment makes it literally impossible to determine how many of each type of wards I have up. I would love a buff icon like most buffs have with a number of counts of each buff, but as far as I know this is currently impossible. *Edit* Yes, the auras help, but they sometimes stack where I cannot really tell if I have half my buffs up or most of them. Looking at the stats is easier. And I will try using instead of for a while and see if that helps.
Which proc? You mean the ward overloads, which are intentional nerfs so that large stacks do eventually have to be recast, or ward insertion, which doesn't consume wards and is 5 buys into the tree? Just wanna be clear on which, because Ward Insertion *does not* consume a ward. If it does, that is a bug, and I need to fix it ASAP, which means switching back here for a bit.
Ward Insertion does *NOT* consume a ward? Lol. I did not know that. Every time I saw abnormally high damage in a melee I thought it was time to cast another ward. I will have to playtest some more. I do not think it was consuming one, but I always recast like a crazy person anyway so long as I had the resources to get mana back. To be clear, that is "Freestyle Offensive Warding"?
Plans for next patch: Major Ward and Hula Ward will no longer be hungry buffs. Ward consuming spells will do nothing if the consumed wards aren't up thanks to an upcoming new feature. Thanks Gaslamp! Major Ward and Hula Ward will no longer provide any Ward Toss, Major Ward, Hula Ward, and Ward Push will become timer spells rather than mana consuming ones Ward Toss will scale entirely off of , very well, and have 4 cooldown. On counter knockback proc for capstone skill On block magic reflect proc for capstone skill On dodge nimbleness buffing proc for capstone skill. Minor Wards stack up to 4, have an upkeep of 8, and have their current stats and costs doubled. I'm hoping these changes will make the capstone skill more interesting, the buffs easier to manage, and the reduction of total from 25 to 16 will make this less of a total replacement for being armored; yes, it was intended that way, but 16is still plenty, even if it's not the same as being decked out in serpentine plate. Any complaints, suggestions, or comments on these plans? PS: I'm thinking I should make the capstone's damaging knockback proc scale off of to discourage the use of heavy armor.
Putting the pre-release up before I go to bed. This requires You Have to Name the Expansion Pack! Coding help would be highly appreciated! This is probably in an overpowered state, numbers will need to be tweaked. I haven't playtested it much because I've spent almost all my time struggling with XML. Grab it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0udaey6mcn297o8/BarrierMaiden.2.0.0.zip --- Okay, now that I've gotten the chance to play it a bit, I think it's actually very close to balanced as it is and hardly OP. The only thing that really troubles me is how cheap it is on mana now, but perhaps as a more supportive skill this isn't really a bad thing.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r9euo1xgagchm4k/BarrierMaiden.2.0.1.zip Using Complexio is now a major commitment. I would like people to test this and assure me that they can only justify using it very deep down in the dungeon. Should I publish this on the steam workshop so long?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bjoxln9gksfyye1/BarrierMaiden.2.1.0.zip Brief outline of what the mod is now: Your Basic Ward: The only true spell in this tree, it summons a hungry ward that consumes one mana every 8 turns, and stacks up to 5 Ward Toss: Sacrifices a ward to deal some damage. Cooldown of 4. This is far, far more powerful if you have the mark of erebus, and allows you to use your mana offensively in that situation. Major Ward: A cooldown spell that promotes one of your wards into a magically defensive ward Tattoos of Warding: A defensive ability that summons wards when you are atacked Hula Ward: A cooldown spell that changes your magical ward to a regenerative one. This allows you to support more basic wards. Freestyle Offensive Warding: Provides an offensive proc that does voltaic damage that scales well with magic power. If you have the mark of erebus, it also triggers an AoE attack around you. Jovian Complex: Provides a powerful selfbuff and AoE attack if you consume a hula ward. Using this spell the first time marks you forever with the mark of erebus, silencing you permanently, but empowers barrier maiden related skills and procs. Using this spell carries a risk of hitting you with a permanent, unremovable debuff to your HP and resistances. Volleyball: Provides a few defensive abilities. When you dodge, you sometimes become more nimble, and if you have the mark of erebus you do a simple AoE attack around you. When you counter, you sometimes do some damage, and if you have the mark of erebus your mana is drained to do a lot more damage and the foe is knocked back. When you block, you sometimes (very rarely) regain some mana.
I am somewhat confused. The current version is a permanent silence? Meaning a magic user will be crippled? This makes it only useful for warriors and rogues. Mages should avoid this skill if I am understanding. Is there a way to get out of the silence?
Don't cast the spell. If you do not cast it, you are not commited to being permanently silenced. If you do cast it, you are. By the way, when you cast it you can no longer cast basic wards to fuel other things, so that alone is a good reason not to use Jovian Complex. Although wards get conjured more often if you do have the mark when you defend, so you have a greater abunance of free ones. If you do cast it, the Jovian Complex spell itself, along with the benefits of the mark, should make up for being silenced to a large degree, anyway. Again though, you do not have to get marked. You only get marked for casting jovian complex. Nothing else in the skill tree commits you to anything.
That could be very useful for a warrior/rogue build, but otherwise it is awful. Even a 999 turn debuff that cannot be removed would be more than acceptable as a once in a run life saver sort of thing. But forever with no magic seems a bit harsh.
I'm not sure I want to change this. I mean, you can just swap that hotbar item out with something else if it is inappropriate for your character. The whole point is that the nuking AoE and high damage voltaic spells you get from it is not available to people who can nuke with things like promethean because they'll refuse to cast the spell. If you really want to change it you could set a timer on the mark. Remember that it is only one spell that does this. All the other spells are useful to a mage. Mages just aren't supposed to use Jovian Complex. The idea here is that this skill tree can provide a supportive "light" and offensive "dark" mode depending on if you cast it. Try both and if one is a lot more fun I'll try to figure out a way to balance the other one? Your Basic Ward and all mana consuming spells from other trees is unavailable if you wanna play dark, and Jovian Complex is unavailable if you want to play Light. PS: To drive this home, I could perhaps provide a potion or something on that level that when taken forever prevents you from using jovian complex in exchange for some permanent modest buff, as the "light" choice. This means you won't accidentally silence yourself.
I may just need to toss a character at it and see how it plays. Then I may appreciate the tradeoff more. But I will have to build for this...
As it happened, for the first time in a while I've gotten a build that actually has barrier maiden in it, and it looks like it'll actually work very well with the mark. It is this: Beserk Magic Training Blood Magic Rogue Scientist Barrier Maiden Silver Tongue Dragonfire Aspirant So I may well be playing the non-mage version myself. ...And I immediately find it is bugged, and things that are only supposed to work when you have the dark mark work even without it. Well, damn it. ...Okay, fixed it. I'm going to add a wee bit of content before releasing a new fixed version, something that'll make the complexio spell useful to mages as well in that they can forever brand themselves as not wanting the one currently intended and instead wanting something weaker.
Let's look at this mod one level at a time, shall we? Level Start: Basic Ward The theme of the mod is introduced! It's a nifty mage armor mod! It makes you not get hit in the face so much, which is nice. It also does that funny explody thing, which adds a nice element of randomness to things. They don't last forever, so there's a reason to keep the Basic Ward spell around. Level Second: Ward Toss Why use the little glowing balls to protect yourself in melee when you could throw them at people and protect yourself at range? The theme of the mod is expanded. Your wards are a resource. They can defend you or attack for you, but this versatility costs you in time. If you're not careful, you can spend a lot of time casting wards, time you may not always have. Level Three: Major Ward The skills theme is expanded on. More wards, more armor, more explosions! And some more exotic resistences. Level of Death: Tattoos of Warding A handy skill that encourages you to go out and block some hits with your face in order to get free wards for your other abilities. Solid, thematic, humorous art, what's not to love? Level Pentagram: Hula Ward What I like about this level is that it really emphasizes the general silliness of the mod while still being functional. It might be a little too functional, though. I'd cut it's block in half, or maybe knock a point off each of those exotic resistances. This skill prevents a lot of damage, I'm not sure it needs all of it. In fact, you might want to think about knocking off a little exotic resistance on all levels of the skill. Fully protected, a character can eat a Thor Bolt from Dredmor, his most powerful spell, and take single digit damage. Of course, full warding is going to be rare given they way they blow up, but the fact that the potential is there suggest it might need a little toning down. Likewise, the ward explosions might be better off with a slightly lower base damage and a slow progression to , just to make using them a little more risky... Level VI: Freestyle Offensive Warding I'll just mention here that I haven't actually gotten to this or anything past it yet, so this is now just my giving impressions based on your skill descriptions. This ability is another neat way of making wards a resource. The fact that it's random will frustrate some people and be part of the appeal to others. Personally, I like the fact that the ability is very powerful, probably more powerful than it could be if I could choose exactly when to use it. Level Septimus: Jovian Complex Let me start by saying I love this idea. I want to have its babies and name them Titan and Europa and Ganymede and feed them an asteroid belt so that they grow up big and strong. (Is that too much information?) A modal skill where I can be either a careful, thoughtful caster on the "light side" or a crazy, random, proc driven machine on the "dark side" is a skill I would play the living hell out of. Barrier Maiden is not that skill. You see, if I'm not using an ability this thematic, this definitive by my second level into a skill tree, it doesn't feel like it's really a part of the theme. Look at the core game skills. I usually have all the defining abilities in the tree by the third level, don't I? Burglary: A steal (granted, only from vending machines), a utility and an escape button. Necronomiceconomics: A zap spell, a nasty DoT and a buff. Fungal Arts: The first shroom proc, the second shroom proc, Moldsmith and another shroom proc. You get the idea. But the thing is, with six skill points invested in the skill, suddenly it feels like you're changing the rules. I know that, with the Mark up I can still do most of the things I could do before I had it. It just really feels like the skill's taken a left turn without much set up. Kinda like Demonology (not the best model for building skills on.) I think Jovian Complex could be its own skill tree. I even have some ideas for how it might work. If you want to leave it in, that's fine. I don't think it's hurting the mod (except see below) but I think you could do the idea much, much better justice if it was its own, fully fledged skill line. If you want to go that route, I'd be happy to contribute to a Jovian Complex brainstorming thread. Level Stop Sign: DoA Volleball Champ Honestly, when Ward Push was the capstone of the skill I thought it was really good. While the Volleyball skill is a hilarious gag, as a skill capstone I don't think I'd ever take it. It just doesn't wow me enough, and by this point I'm rather expecting it to interact directly with Wards in some way, which it doesn't. I think the presence of Jovian Complex at the level before kind of limits what you can do here, and if you leave the Complex in, I'd switch them. After all, if I'm going to make the choice between good and evil late, I might as well make it at the very end, no? But on the whole, I'd prefer to see Ward Push restored to the skill line rather than the passive abilities from the skill as it currently stands. You could flavor it as a volleyball spike with a ward creating a huge explosion, instead of just a huge explosion... On the whole: This skill is still way nifty. But I think your last two levels are currently decreasing rather than increasing its oomph. Especially when Jovian Complex practically screams to be its own skill line.
I just got through a nice run that ended on level six or seven. I made a melee build with rogue skills except this one. JC makes this much less a wizard skill and exclusively kills magic forevermore. But I did it anyway. What did I find? It took the edge off of mana costs just fine, but without the ability to cast any spell there was little to drain mana anyway. JC is good. But it is double edged and I will not be using it again. I cannot stand around waiting for Burglary teleport to cooldown. I died waiting to get away to heal up. I do not blame JC for that, but antimagic kills my builds even when I make a melee and cooldown powered build. That all said, JC was never forced upon me. I chose to cast it to see what it was like. When I make a mage I will just abstain from casting it ever. (Except as a literal last resort. And even then I expect to die quickly.)
An interesting note. My and were never quite as high after casting JC than before. Is this as intended or is there something I am missing out on? I could get more Minor Wards from melee just fine, but if ever my Grand Ward died, I would be screwed too. But all this may be useless next time you update. Barrier Warden is a nice skillset and is invaluable for my more squishy mages like the Radiant Wizard builds I like to make.
Block dropped from ~84 to ~51 after JC. Here is a save. I have not even touched or been touched by a monster. I used debug functions to level up. I note that mana drops just as fast before JC as after. I had not noticed this before. This is using version 2.1 of Barrier Maiden. (And a pretty shitty build for using JC too.)
