Is Brax intended to be on that list as well? Because I find plenty of good gear in his stores after level 8 on all difficulties. You can find the Hexaxe and Doul's down there on a semi-regular basis. I also play primarily melee builds and I'll admit its a tad more challenging than mage builds. However, I die plenty from traps and opening a door on a huge room full of monsters as a mage, too. This is partly because I almost never remember to take the uberteleport skills, but partly because they don't really suit my play style. You may be right about NTTG not spawning evil chests as much. Does that make it broken? Finally, has it ever occurred to you that staying alive in the utterdeeps is supposed to be extremely hard to do? A simple fact of tactics is that ranged attacks make life easier for you. The game really seems to suffer from a lack of ranged attacks, particularly physical ranged attacks, on the part of monsters, rather than overpowered ranged attacks on the part of players. Mayhap there's a mod in that? It seems to me that making you die more on the lower levels should be the idea of some mod, some time. That is the whole point of the game, isn't it?
Thoughts: Why does it reduce ? Both from a thematic and gameplay perspective I'd prefer it giving you . Any skill that has a major, gameplay changing downside typically give you a major upside as the first level e.g. Vampirism gives you on-hit healing at level 1, Vegan gives you animal immunity at level 1 Try to balance the skill so that it's useful even if you don't invest any points in it Upside ideas Some kind of bonus for destroying* artifacts 'It Belongs in a Museum' Permanent, infinitely stackable (but very weak) buff for every artifact destroyed Bonus XP/Zorkmids Grant recipes* Spawn food/drink/ingredients on kill Maybe something like Demonology where the end of the skill takes a turn e.g. You gain faith in the Lutefisk god and can polymorph into a fish (or something) *: May not be possible with modding right now
It can go both ways, but I agree that it should give righteous resistance, if you look at it objectively. Because as a paladin, especially an antitheist one, the character with this skill tree would be pretty much brainwashed into defending what he believes in, and such a thing can only be summed as self-righteousness. I agree wholeheartedly. It might be a problem right now, similar to the one where levelling up with Necronomics ups one's stats, but going in the opposite direction. Still, the idea is rad. Actually, if you gave the character a passive ability to get something that is required for all of the granted recipes, which would be available from the start, then the final effect is the same. And in most cases, this is an acceptable workaround.
In reverse: I quite agree there is a lack of PHYSICAL, and specifically physical, ranged attacks. There are PLENTY of magic-based ranged attacks on the critters - this is one of the things that makes playing a warrior harder, since a warrior's ranged tools are wither very weak, or very finite, so they HAVE to close range, getting pelted all the way. A mage tosses an Obvious or a Rift or a Nerve Staple/Pyrokinesis or....you get the picture, and the problem goes away. If they're spamming, open range and open fire again. Feel like conserving mana and there's only one of them? A Clockwork Bolt-Thrower does the same damage in the hands of a mage or a warrior. An no, I don't think dying more on the lower levels is the point of the game - I think the point of the game is providing you a FAIR challenge that EVERY build has a chance to overcome, a challenge that is not slanted towards a particular playstyle and skill tree setup. At the moment, that is very much not the case. Also, please note: I never argued that it should be EASY to stay alive in the deeps - I argue that a warrior should have exactly as hard a time as a mage or a rogue does, and vice-versa. I've won the game 6 times - 2 warriors, 1 rogue, 3 wizards. I've got over 300 hours into the game. My tombstone overfloweth with fallen Eyebrows. But one thing has in my experience held true all the way through...for a warrior, floor 1 is a gift and the rest are all trials. For a mage,beat floor 1 and as long as you don't do something stupid, you have WON. Period. That paradigm needs to change, badly - Gnomes and Wraiths are a step in the right direction since they have mana-drain attacks, but Wraiths especially are actually worse on warriors than on mages; the debuffs are negligible but the constant damage zone spam plus the chicken AI and blinking makes it hair-tearingly frustrating as a warrior to hunt them down, or very costly in terms of ammo. A mage pops two spells and collects the XP. NTTG not spawning Evil Chests as much: It is broken in that one class is severely hurt by the lower resources and one class...quite bluntly doesn't care. If that balance was corrected, I would call it "fair". Playstyle: If you die as often on mages as on warriors and you know it's because you're not taking a teleport skill, then you're making a conscious choice to make the game harder. As a choice, it cannot be used as a balance argument - if you want to argue that the plethora of teleport skills available to mages are broken, then I'll engage in that in another thread, because it has no place in this particular thread. And no, Brax is NOT intended to be on that list, because the best armor is non-artifact at base(Imperial Boilerplate - the physical defense is nice but doesn't help against most critters deep, the elemental resistances are nice but token-weight in the deeps) and the way Brax spawns weapons may or may not make the weapons included immune to the self-based corruption. I know for a fact it does NOT make an Angsty Blade Of The Antihero that is Brax-bought immune to monster-based corruption, as I've had one get tagged by a Magicky Golem as soon as I left the shop. So Brax is a question mark - all the others are known quantities, specifically any item you get from them IS going to decay in the hands of a character with this skill. And that means, my first argument still stands - even if Brax-bought and forever unKronged Doul's are immune, it only ups the available damage to 60 + - and this is VERY luck-based, as I've gone many a dungeon without seeing ONE Doul's, much less two and both in a shop. It still does not cover the damage output you need to survive deep, unless you're some kind of prodigy at the game or the RNG loves you.
I am not sure if this would make up for not being able to use alot of great endgame gear (or destroying them if you did use them), but what if an Atheistic Paladin was immune to all monster based corruption? I can imagine that good gear would be essential for this play style, so having all your normal gear be immune to corruption would be nice, and would shift this tree to a melee style, since warrior/ melee builds seem to get corrupted more as well as being an interesting way to help balance the drawbacks. Edit: Thanks for the clarification RaustBlackDragon.
Only enchanted items can be corrupted. If it doesn't have bonus artifact stats, it can't be corrupted anyway.
Thinking about this more and I'm really liking it. Code-wise, you can make the artifact get destroyed without having to use Archaeology's 'sacrificeartifact' effect. It's a glitch or something where if you 'spawn' and item it'll destroy the artifact but not actually spawn anything: Code: <spell name="Destroy Artifact" type="item" downtime="10" consumeItem="1" consumeItemType="artifact" icon="skills/rogue/skill_archaeology0_32.png"> <effect type="spawn" itemname="Native Gold" amount="1"/> </spell> Then you just trigger the permanent, infinitely stackable buff. Balancing such a buff is tricky. Even giving 1 can net you a massive boost by Floor 15. Artifacts per floor are about: 2 x Anvil 3 x Quest 3 x On the floor 1 x Lutefisk So about 10 per floor. That's 150 stacks which equals 150 50 25. Interesting to think about.
Maybe you could have it trigger one of a few buffs from a list every time? One for , one for , maybe a really rare one for , etc.
