Questions About Encrusting

OK, so the new Encrusting system is really awesome! XD unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of information about it out right now. So, I was wondering if anyone knew:

A) What are the thresh holds for reaching new levels of instability?

B) What all effects can you "earn" via reaching new levels of instability?

C) Are there different tiers of instability effects you can "earn"? AKA is it safer to have many slightly unstable encrustments or one DANGEROUSLY unstable encrustment?

D) Blister packs, how do they work? ?_?

And finally, if anyone wants to piggyback their own questions about how this new system works (or possibly point me in the right direction for finding the info myself), I'd appreciate that as well.

 

I was going to ask similar question. Encrusting is just too scary for me right now. First I encrust my helm 3 times for better trap aff. but then I was exploding whenever someone attacked me (died because of that. I exploded near Brax who killed me with his buddies), and now I encrusted my helm twice with +5 life (using steaks for this) and whenever I'm struck in combat I have chance for an effect similar to squidbolt. With enough necro resist that could be nice zoo killer, but not when I'm on level 2 with almost no life.

 

you may want to wait until the patch comes out. A lot about encrusting will change as a result of the coming patch, plus gameplay changes.

 

I got "haematic drain," an unremovable buff that gives -4 burl, -2 health and mana regen, and a handful of other penalties.

It cannot be removed.

It stacks.

I'm not sure but I think it keeps stacking itself even if you stop using the unstable weapon.

This was from a weapon that had ONE point of instability. I put spikes on a dagger twice.

I am never encrusting anything again. Ever.

 

I Myself got impoisoning after using the spiked shield encrustment twice on a Mirror shield. It causes -10 to HP and -1 to all stats for 64 turns every now and then, and it stacks as well.

I think the odds of instability exponentially increase when you stack similar encrustments on the same weapons. from what I've done as research, every time you encrust there's a % chance of gaining an instability, and those add up with each new encrustment. but they MULTIPLY when you use the same encrustment over and over.

I think the spikes have a 9% chance of instability, 9x9= 81% chance? (not sure how it's calculated exactly, but that sounds accurate enough.

 

Haematic drain does not wear off.

 

I guess if it's hurting you really bad, I'd dump it and move on.

personally, Impoisoning really screwed me over, because I only had 64 max health at the time I got it. getting 2-3 stacks of impoisoning were common, and it was thus cutting my health nearly in half. the mirror shield as a result was not very useful any more.

 

What I mean is, Haematic Drain had no brittleness and no duration. I have no idea if there was any circumstance under which I would be able to get rid of it. That character soon died due to -12 burliness and -6 mana regen.

 

Haemetic can only be removed by drinking a Haemetic Phylactory you find on the floor.

If you roll that instability, consider that item dead

 

I think it's not, how multiply in % works. Once I was great with Mathemagics but now I'm old and forgetful, but the correct formula is:
x+(1-xn)*x where x is instability level and xn is number of iterations. So if you encrusted item with the same buff 3 times and instability level was 9% then:
9%+(1-0.09)*9%+(1-2*0,09)*9% = 24.57%

I'm not sure if it works like I'm thinking here, because I'm scared as hell to encrust anything, but if you encrust one weapon 3 times with one buff you will have one, big chance for problems, but when you encrust one weapon 3 times with 3 different buffs, you will have smaller chance for a huge problems (all 3 instability can proc at once and that could be very bad!)

 

I think they simply roll chance for instability with each encrustment, but just once though. so I don't think you'd get three instabilities at once, although the chance for getting one on the third try would probably be high.

 

I'm quite sure there are as many rolls, as different encrustments you have. Please check this link: http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/the-encrustador-aka-encrusting-is-overpowered.4531/ One hit, multiple effects.

 

well, from the looks of things, DMT completely disregarded instability and stacked at many effects as he could on his gear.

I'm referring to the odds of gaining an instability when you encrust something. the first instability makes items (slightly unstable). at that point, there's a chance a debuff will proc in combat.

in DMT's case, he had several items with DANGEROUS instability, so it's easy to see why two attacks could clear out an entire room. I'm fairly certain some of those instabilities summoned eldritch beings from between the 12th and 13th dimensions.

so, lets say you encrust something with spikes. you don't gain an instability. then you encrust the same thing again with Lymons. is there a chance of gaining two instabilities or one? this is what I was referring to with post #11

I think you might be thinking that instabilities come with each encrusting? I'm not sure. your math looks excellent though.

Edit: in contrast to my grammar.

Edit:
oh yeah, I opened up the XML for the games encrust system, and right at the top, it answers my #2 question!

<unstableEffect spell="Grenade Self" name="Exploder"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Easy Target Instability" name="Missing"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Necropain" name="Necromanticula"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Tentacular Self-doom" name="Tentacles"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Froda's Jump Discontinuity" name="Twitchiness"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Terrible Poison" name="Impoisoning"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Curse of Weakness" name="Weakening"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Easy Target Sucker Curse" name="Sucker"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Blood Debt" name="Sanguinous Misappropriation"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Haematic Drain" name="Foul Lich-magic"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Pyromatic Implosion" name="Immolation"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Self Darkened Vision" name="Darkening"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Necromantic Blinding" name="Seeing What Should Not Be Seen"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Greater Necrodrain" name="Thaumoentropic Vexation"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Necrodrain" name="Draining"/>
<unstableEffect spell="Hungry Hero" name="Hunger"/>

 

Hmm... as I said, I didn't encrust much, but I was sure, that instability works like this.
1. Each encrust gives some % of instability
2. There is as many rolls on instability effect as many different encrust you have. Different instability effects can stack in one instance
3. Same encrust makes chance for instability higher, but there is only 1 roll.

But I will not be sure, unless someone from Gaslamp confirm this.

 

So, what I'm getting from this is, well let me do an example:

Lets say that you just found a really sweet weapon, like the Mace of Windu or something, and you want to encrust it. so you select Ultimate Rearden Crust, with it's Instability value of 40. when you do encrust it, there's a 40% chance of gaining a De-chantment from the UnstableEffect spells. you'll only have a 40% chance of becoming "slightly unstable", which means you have one of those debuffs. Ive seen now that the game tells you which one you have. Say you got Grenade self.

Now that you're Mace of WINdu or rift axe or WHATEVER has Ultimate Rearden Crust, and in addition the UnstableEffect Grenade Self, there's a % chance in combat of turning your opponents into Zorkmids AND setting a grenade upon yourself.

If you Encrust it again, and you're unlucky, you might get another UnstableEffect, like Tentacular Self-Doom. now there's a % chance in combat that you'll turn the enemies into coinage, and/or blow yourself up, and/or invite Zalgo over for a cup of tea.

I think that the % chance of the effects happening is not related to the Instability numbers of the encrustment, those only correspond to your chance of gaining new and Terrible Debuffs.

 

I might mod haematic drain out of my xml.

I don't want an unremovable debuff that can result in long-term unenjoyment, you know what I'm sayin'? I don't want to be afraid of encrusting. I'd rather more short-term debuffs that bring destructive tendancies, but don't hurt me forever. That is an un-fun mechanic to deal with right now.

I'd rather proc The Bomb on me than Haematic Drain. At least I'd laugh at The Bomb exploding on me. That'd be like being pranked in college. It might be terrible now, but you can laugh on it later when you look back at it. Getting a Haematic Drain debuff would be like being told I have athlete's foot. That's not fun at all.

 

It now warns you, when you encrust the item, what instability it's given you. So it's not like you'll be using an unstable item and suddenly get hit with Haematic Drain when you weren't ready for it. If an item gets that instability, you'll know, and you can just discard it without using it. Consider it a small chance of destroying the item when you go to encrust it.

 

Pretty much this. and really; isn't that what the hardcore gamer in us really wanted? it's effectively the same

 

That thread was one that I made before encrusting was changed quite dramatically in the latest patch.

Previously there were only three instability effects and none of them debuffed you. It was quite possible to build resists for all of them and then you could encrust past DANGEROUS without any risks. The instability effects were just like extra offensive attacks.

Now, however, most of the instablity effects are horrible debuffs.

As for how they occur and when to stop encrusting things, notice the number next to the little purple broken star thing on the encrusting menu. I don't know exactly how this mechanic works but this is my theory:

This value is probably something like a percent chance to become unstable. This instability value is retained by the item. The first encrust might only have a 6% chance to become unstable but a second identical encrust would make that 12%, then 18% and so on. More powerful encrusts can rapidly bring this value near to 100% at which point each encrust will definately add a new instability until you've got them all.

Blister packs have negative instability, so they will reduce the chance of instability and allow you to encrust more on an item without it becoming a deathtrap. They don't exist for most item types, however, so they seem a bit pointless.