Important! Work on this is going on temporary hiatus until the new expansion comes out. I don't want to spend three hours making new bows only to find out they put nearly the exact same ones in the game already, after all Keep your suggestions coming, though, and I'll implement them once I get back to work on it. Early alpha release of a large mod - the Crossbow Overhaul (or Crossbowverhaul.) I wanted to get some opinions on what I have done so far before I put much more effort into it. For instance, if everyone hates quivers, I'll work less on those. Currently included: 3 skills (1 completed, 1 about 90% completed, 1 about 70% completed) 6 crossbows 2 bows (more damage with burliness) 10 Bolts 13 Quivers 7 Armor 16 Recipes (some hidden) Known issues: Siege mode doesn't lock you down properly all the time Almost all place holder art! Looking for: Feedback on balance Feedback on quivers (Different slot? Melee penalties?) Ideas for skills and items, especially crossbows Art, art, art! If anyone wants to do art for this mod, PLEASE contact me! Even a single sprite goes a long way to going gold. Change log: version.65: 1 new crossbow modified sniping a bit finished crossbow tinkering (aside from siege mode...) 7 pieces of regular armor for xbow users, (1 glove, 2 hat 1 ring, 3 chest) Next update: More armor, and hopefully I'll make siege mode work properly... Keep those poll responses coming! I wasn't going to put in ANY armor until I looked at that poll. (Examples of what you want along with a poll response REALLY helps) Also, I'm still looking for anyone who wants to help with art...
Seems to me that some damage scaling (off , probably!) in an early crossbow tree skill would be awesome. Something like 2 + (0.4*) as bonus damage would probably do it.
I think its a mistake crossbows are weak - you can get Chest of Evil crossbows :| , if I'm not recalling incorrectly
I think you probably can get chest of evil crossbows, but that's not very reliable. That 84 damage sword I got was just on the ground, and keep in mind I was playing a character with 7 rogue skills at the time. If I was playing with 7 warrior skills, you can easily double that 84 damage. There are two comparable top tier crossbows, the bolt eruptor (20 damage+aoe) and clockwork rail launcher (24 damage+piercing) and the best bolt that you can actually use for everyday use does 16. Currently, crossbows are treated as a secondary weapon. My main goal is to try and make them a primary weapon at the expense of survivability but with the bonus of range - maybe put them on par with mages that use bolts instead of mana, but lose utility in exchange for putting out more sustained damage. Hopefully that's the goal I reach with this mod, and any suggestions (like better damage scaling, which is easily implementable, above) will go a long way.
I think you need to change the mod.xml's mod name from New Arrows to Crossbowverhaul or something more recognizable. Just be aware that changing the name there can break saves. It did take me a moment to relize that the mod name was very different than the zip/thread name. Since you are still in the testing phase, it shouldn't be too major to change it now but could torq off a bunch of people if you change it later.
Oh, thanks for letting me know. That name's a leftover from when I was planning on releasing it in a bunch of parts (one for each skill, one for the items) in case you didn't want everything at once. I'm not too concerned about breaking saves at this point since this is just an early release, hence why I didn't release it on Steam yet.
I'm having a helluva time getting siege mode to work properly. Is it even possible for a spell that you cast to lock yourself in place? The only thing I can think of right now is to maybe just have it paralyze you when the buff expires. Would that be acceptable, or should I just scrap the whole ability if I can't get it to work right?
Hum, you should be able to do it with 2 spell, one buff with destroyonmove="1" and a dot who stun you if the first buff isn't active. It doesn't stop you from moving, but it make it a really bad idea.
What? How could you double that damage by taking 7 warrior skills? I find crossbows to be really, really strong to start with - especially because they can have the same damage mods as melee weapons AND you can dual wield tomes with them.
They can be really strong early game, but lose power in later floors. (For example the highest non-proc damage with vanilla crossbows and best non-proc bolts is 60, that's not the best crossbow/bolts, but you get the drift. That's with dual universal principles, cruelly barbed steel bolts and dwarven bolt-thrower, you might get another 10-15 from gear. If you want better than that you need some procs/scaling, and yes I'm aware clockwork rail launchers are stronger, just making a point about procless ones. Later floor monsters have hundreds of hitpoints). At some point melee characters can't one-shot enemies with 200 damage hits anymore, and crossbow users need 3+ hits.
The problem isn't that crossbows are strong early game, though that is an issue since I don't want to make them easy mode until floor 10 or something. The problem is that they very, very quickly lose power to the point where a straight rogue almost isn't even viable compared to a straight mage or warrior (And don't even get me started on comparing damage output from crossbow to dual wielder. Bows get the same penalty from not using a shield, but none of the bonuses), especially when fighting Dredmor. Some scaling and better late game crossbows introduced by this mod should fix this. Also, whether or not crossbows NEED an overhaul isn't really relevant. I'm making this regardless, and I'm more making it to make crossbows more fun, and to make crossbows work how I want. I want to make a straight crossbow character, thematically and mechanically, and be able to use him reliably throughout the game. If you don't think crossbows need an overhaul, then obviously a mod that overhauls crossbows isn't going to be one that you'll like.
Btw my next update to the library mod teaser will help too. (One of the books has a 100% crossbow proc with 10+2x, as well as having 55 on the book, shows up late enough that there's small enough variety of loot that you're pretty much bound to come across it(lvl 8 item), and more books will be added later including late ones).
But if I dual wield Doul's Possible Swords/Asgardian Stormhammers I'm sitting on +60 damage as well - and I needed dual wielding to boot. I get no cool procs and no cool bolts to switch too. The lack of melee power is balanced by, you know, not having to be in melee.
If you got a pair of evil chest weapons you're sitting at +120 or more by the end. I've had weapons with more than 60 damage each. With procs(for example I found a 64 damage hexaxe).
I do not think that crossbows *Should* be equal to melee weapons. That would only make sense if you could not use them at range. The whole point of crossbows is range. But range can be gained with throwing stuff just as easily. I think of a crossbow as something to Krong for a bonus proc. It applies to melee just as easily as bolts. (I do not think crossbow procs apply to throwing attacks though. Correct me if I am mistaken.) I would welcome newer and better crossbows. Even if they are overpowered. You can always make a massively powerful crossbow that is double edged. Say for instance, this example: Defective Ballista +35 , +5 , +8 +12 +9 100% proc of "What the Hell was the Engineer Thinking?" That would do 5 , 5, 5 and 2 damage per turn for five turns to you. That is a total of 17 damage per turn. It could *Easily* kill you if you do not have enough resistances and health. It would probably be better to scale with and just take a flat 5% every turn for five turns with a max of two stacks. With this and a massive stack of healing items, you could probably wipe out some pesky late game monsters with a shot or two at the most. Someone playing with Fungal skills could easily negate the damage of this. I love double edged late game gear. I love Crossbows and Throwing weapons and Bolts too. We have a plethora of excellent bolts via several of the bigger mods like ID, RR, and FAXPAX. We may still need some late game Crossbows and throwing equipment though.
Mages don't need to be in melee either, but they still do more damage than melee and crossbows. Mages need mana? Bow users need bolts, and that's actually worse because you can't reliably use the same bolt like you can reliably use the same high level spell. Crossbows also need line of sight and don't have ANY utility while most magic spells don't need line of sight and have teleports, buffs, drains, debuffs, etc. Also, it's hardly fair to say you NEED to take dual wielding while ignoring the fact that you NEED to take tinkering as a bow user. I dare you to go through the game using only crossbows without tinkering the same way you can only use melee without smithing or only use magic without alchemy or wandcrafting (Granted that one is a bit difficult, too). Also, "no cool procs?" What are you talking about? Make a dedicated warrior, dual wielding, swords, berserker, for example. That's ten procs from three skills. And every warrior skill has at least 3 procs. Bow user? 2 procs in crossbow. Plus MAYBE one from a bow and bolt, but the penalty is that you can't consistently use the same bolt while you get unlimited use from a sword, skill or spell. But again, this mod isn't about whether or not crossbows need to be balanced. If you don't think crossbows need to be balanced, this mod isn't for you. This is like going into, let's say, the summoner skill and saying, "This mod sucks, the game already has a summoning skill, therefore we don't need this mod." This mod is about me making crossbows how I want them to be, nothing more.
Lategame throwing is pretty much covered(see Clockwork Sawblade), that can sometimes still take 2-3 hits to kill something lategame, but that's still better than crossbows. And it has 1:1 scaling with melee power, and procs with that scaling another couple of times(specifically it procs 12 & 6 & 6+x & 6+x & 6 turn dot of 2+0.15x & 2+0.15x ). If you're running around with 40-50 melee power, you can easily hit for 150-200 with it. Crossbows would be hard pressed to hit for 100.
I think the sniping skill I'm adding in should make bows fairly balanced late game since an early skill has a 100 percent proc that scales with EDR, effectively making all crossbows do more damage as your EDR increases like throwing and melee and magic all do with their respective stats. My only problem is that this might make them a bit OP early game since crossbows are pretty good to start with. Maybe make the EDR scaling a later level skill? Or maybe add a second proc later on so the first scales for .1 per EDR (for example) and the second one adds another .1 per EDR? (different numbers, probably, just an example) Though another issue is that on hit effects can get a bit out of hand since that's really the only way to affect Xbows and only Xbows... Right now, with two quivers, a bow and a bolt with a proc, and all skills maxed, you're getting to have a chance of about 12 skills going off when you hit any given enemy... I hope that doesn't turn out to be an issue XD
