You Have To Put The Feedback for the DLC In The Beta Thread

Knockback from Baromatic Pulse Device can send targets through walls.

Got a crash from Alchemical Toxin Canister when I threw it at furniture (I wanted to check a wall for fragile spots, and there was a weapon rack where I wanted to center the blast). This was also very close to the northwest corner of the map, so maybe that's relevant?

 

I'm having a heck of a time building a warlockery character. So many skill points invested and for what? More melee damage and the 1 to all resists? If someone can help me out here, let me know.

Obviously you want some spell power and you want to be melee. You also want max block, but you need to do that anyway if you stand in melee. You then also need to generate copious amounts of mana in melee so blood magic is a given. So lets see, to meet all those requirements you are looking at either an unarmed shield build or dual staves.

So you are looking at something like...

1) Blood Magic
2) Staves/Unarmed
3) Block for the stats
4) Heavy Armor
5) Warlockery

If you drop any of those skills you lose out on a ton of block and melee stats.

Then you need some reason to be doing all this anyway, so you are going to need a casting skill. Flesh crafting is pretty good for this as is psionics. Then you have one slot left for something like geomancy, veganism, or viking magic.

But lets assume you throw together this warlockery build, when exactly do you feel like putting points into warlockery and why are you doing all this again just make use of a skill set?

It seems like warlockery is designed as a support set for gish characters, but it's benefits are so costly and niche you need to build around warlockery instead.

 

encountered this tile today. it's impassable

 

I have encountered stuff like this before. The lamp was on the wall and something moved it like psychokinetic shove or a bomb. It also sometimes happens with sconces. It's a pain when they do that. Probably wall fixtures shouldn't be able to move and should disappear when the wall they are on is destroyed. My thoughts on it anyway.

 

I'm moving onto monsters now, and I found five instances where "blast" is used instead of "blasting".

Line numbers are in parentheses.

Code:

\game\monDB.xml(1016):    <damage blast="3" toxic="7"/>           
\game\monDB.xml(1143):    <damage blast="3" conflagratory="5"/>   
\game\monDB.xml(1153):    <damage blast="1" hyperborean="5" conflagratory="0"/>
\game\monDB.xml(1164):    <damage blast="1" transmutative="3" conflagratory="0"/>
\game\monDB.xml(1182):    <damage blast="1" conflagratory="3"/>

Also, a case where "castSprite" is used instead of "castSpellSprite".

Code:

\game\monDB.xml(466):  <castSprite name="sprites/monster/djinn/Djinn_Cast.spr"/>

The Warlock Battle Form monster has two sfx elements. It also has a damageBuff element which I don't think does anything. I added a damageBuff to Lil Batty of 100 piercing damage and it's not doing any more damage than normal to me.

Code:

\expansion2\game\monDB.xml(27):  <sfx
\expansion2\game\monDB.xml(50):  <sfx attack="large_attack" hit="large_hit" die="large_die" spell="large_spell" />
 
\expansion2\game\monDB.xml(47):   <damagebuff piercing="1" />

Summon Wyrmling has two stats elements.

Code:

\game\monDB.xml(1174):  <monster name="Summon Wyrmling" displayName="Friendly Wyrmling" level="8" special="1" terrain="2">

 

Another trap to add to the list of traps that cast on you instead of your enemies when they step on them: Fiery Surprise

 

"So many skill points"? What? One? The more melee damage is free (level zero), and the 1 point to all resists and to Armor (guaranteed to save you thousands of HP over the course of the dungeon) is level 2 -- that's a single skill point.

Warlockery can be thought of in one of three different ways. The first and, in my mind, most 'true', is to use it to give a Melee Necromancer some ability to survive long enough to earn Mark of Chthon and Pact of Fleeting Life. (Also, Mage's Mana Maille gives necro resist, so bonus.) Warlockery, Necro, Emo, Unarmed, Blood Mage, Alchemy, and Burglary is a pimp build for this kind of play.

The second is to give a Rogue or Warrior something to do with their mana that syncs up well with what they're already doing. Even with low Magic Power, Puissant Touch adds a few points of Aethereal Damage to an attack that you were going to make anyway, so booyah. Warlock's Challenge is great for getting distant caster mobs to come to you (allowing you to save your Move in Mysterious Ways for an escape rather than using it offensively.) You may only ever need 2 skill points in Warlockery for a use like this, but it's a huge blessing to get out of those 2 points. Tack it onto a standard fighter-type: Dual Wield, Axes, Berserker Rage, Burglary, Fungal Arts, Demonlogy, and Warlockery is a hell of an asskicker.

The third is to build around the skill, like you're talking about. Max out your Block with Shield Mastery and Armor Mastery on top of Dual Staves, and once you have level 6 (auto-riposte on block) and 100 block, you can effectively attack up to 5 times per turn. Lurk on the edge of a room, activate Arcane Capacitor, and on turn 3, hit Warlock's Challenge and call them over to get punched in the face so hard that they'll be talking out their arse. Unarmed, Shield Mastery, Armor Mastery, Psionics, Warlockery, Ley Line Walker, and Magic Training is a build that I've taken down to DL 13 pretty handily.


Warlockery is expensive in exactly one respect: Essence of Battle costs one mana per round. It's a huge cost, and I've already mentioned that I think it needs buffing to account for that cost -- but what you might not be seeing is the fact that, when you have Essence of Battle is active, every single Warlockery spell gets better. Puissant Touch does more damage. Mage's Mana Maille steals less MP per hit. Warlock's Challenge paralyzes it's targets for a couple of rounds so you get a free hit. Chronomantic Twist gives you an extra turn of time-stop without an extra turn paralyzed. Even the auto-riposte effect ripostes with the advanced form of Puissant Touch when you're in Essence of Battle. So as long as you keep throwing around the Warlockery spells, the one mana per round of the buff is actually a hell of a deal.


Does that answer your question?

 

You do make a valid point that the second point in warlockery is very solid and a two point investment in the tree is worthwhile.

As for the builds, the first build you mentioned sounds interesting with necro + unarmed + emo. So if it works, I take your word for it. Personally I avoid such builds for a couple of reasons one being that I almost always end up getting trigger happy with the last necro spell and watching my hp go from 100% to 0% in 2 turns. The second being I really do not like being in melee with a low armor build unless i can hit 100% block. So I'd probably end up using necro and a 100% block build with unarmed. If you are unarmed and melee and not wearing heavy armor, it seems silly not to shoot for 100% block.

The second build I'm a bit unsure about. This game really steers your towards either flat lining magic power or building a mage/battlemage. I don't really see that as viable. The pussiant touch would do little, still I suppose you can't beat the +1 all resists for 2 points.

 

The real bennie in the 2nd build, as I mentioned, is investing 2 levels in it and getting Warlock's Challenge. That spell drags a mob from wherever it is to right next to you and it doesn't attack you after it arrives there, so you get to attack it first, just as if you had let it walk up to you. It's great for snagging distant caster mobs, for putting a munchkin between you and a named mob so that you can eat an Omlette in relative peace, and for (with Burglary or Mathemagic) stranding an annoying mob on an island so you can bolt it to death.

 

So I take the stairs down into level 6. The screen pops up MONSTER ZOO!! immediately. My first reaction is "oh no, not again".Then I realize there is no threat whatsoever.



Seems like somehow the game treated me as entering a monster zoo, didn't reveal the zoos on the minimap, but did reveal a monster count.

Something strange is definitely going on here. When I actually find the zoo, the monster count increases:

 

Game crashed when I finished out the Clockwork Knight skilltree. Another person mentioned this issue in IRC, but with a different skilltree. It seems to happen randomnly, and as far as I know it doesn't affect anything. I just reloaded my game, leveled up again, and it worked fine.

 

All knockback effects can send targets through walls as long as they knockback a distance that's greater than the thickness of the wall. Otherwise the wall will stop them.

 

Are you running mods with the DLC perchance? The weird-shaped multi-room zoo on the minimap doesn't match any zoo I've seen in the DLC files. Even if those are separate rooms overridden by a bug to count as zoos (see below), they're still several shapes that aren't normally room designs for that level. It may be more helpful to the beta test process to run the DLC sans mods for a few more days. Just sayin'.

My guess would be that's a custom zoo (from a mod) that is non-rectangular. To function properly, zoo designs must always have a rectangular border of walls to keep other rooms from spawning within them. When a zoo is placed on the map, the game essentially draws a rectangle whose outer dimensions are defined by the zoo entry in rooms.xml. Every space within that rectangle counts as zoo. If you open a door to a room with even 1 tile of zoo in it, you get the message. Once you can see that one tile, all the rest of zoo becomes visible. If that one tile never ends up in your visual sight radius, (such as if there's a wall between you and it), the zoo won't become visible till you can see it.

For what it's worth, last I checked the files of the DLC they all had rectangular borders.

I suppose it could also be a rectangular zoo whose size dimension line has a gross error. I'll check the DLC files for that, just to be sure.

 

That one's from FAXPAX, I believe. You might want to ask Fax about it.

 

As it turns out, "Goo Zoo" in the DLC has height="13" but should be height="12". It's one row shorter than it had once been.

It's not the cause of the reported zoo bug (as it didn't and can't spawn on that floor), but it should be fixed in the files anyway just to make sure it doesn't throw up any errors when it does spawn.

 

yeah... for future reference, if you are going to test bugs for the patch, try to avoid playing with any mods.

 

It's not in FaxPax. It's from a mod I haven't released yet, since its in testing (and this is why: I need to add a square border to the room).

 

Ach, my bad.

 

Does that work on customengraving too?