If you could revamp a core skill, which skill(s) would you choose and what would you change?

I have a few ideas of my own on this question, but i haven't had a chance to write them down yet. But if you have a good idea for making a chance to any of the core skills, i think that this thread is a good place to collect your ideas on the matter so in the future we can look over all the suggestions for changing the core skills and make some effort to implement them.

 

I'd choose

• Swords 1-6
• Axes 1-6
• Maces 1-6
• Staves 1-6
• Archery 1, 3-5
• Thrown Weaponry 1-5
• Unarmed 3, 5
• Shield Bearer 1, 4
• Berserker Rage 4
• Master of Arms 2, 4
• Vampirism 2-4
• Fleshsmithing 1, 5
• Mathemagic 2, 4-5
• Necronomiconomics 4-6
• Viking Wizardry 2, 4-6
• Astrology 2-6
• Promethean Magic 2, 4
• Magic Training 3-5
• Blood Mage 1, 5
• Ley Walker 2, 3
• Perception 1-2, 5-6
• Assassination 1, 2, 3, 5
• Wand Lore 1-5 (+ Recipes)
• Smithing 1-5 (+ Recipes)
• Tinkering (+ Recipes)

That sums up every skill level that I feel is lacking/overpowered in some way, even if it's only minor in most cases.

 

I can think of several skills I'd revamp just off the top of my head. I'd definitely make the biggest changes to Astrology, Fleshsmithing and Blood Mage.

Astrology
Lv0 - Radiant Aura
Remove the brittle effect and make the buff cost 1MP/7 turns. I hate brittle buffs from magic, I feel magic should give hungry buffs and non-magic skills and items should give brittle/limited attack buffs. I'd then replace Syzergy with Radiant Aura in the Pangalactic Gargleblaster code, since giving out Syzergy in an item seems to make the tree so much less impressive.

Lv1 - Solar Inscription
Raise the stun chance to 100% and make it a 3x3 detonation rather than just striking the triggering creature. It should not affect the caster.

Lv2 - Celestial Aegis
Remove the brittle part of the buff. 'Cause that's a really dumb way to make this skill different from Mark of Black Eyeliner. Change the to . There's no air in space, after all.

Lv3 - Southern Cross
A new spell that places five Solar Inscription runes in a "+" shape, with two squares in between the center rune and the four points.

Lv4 - Syzergy
Triple the Damage and Stat bonuses to this skill, remove the bonus MP (you'll get it from the boosted anyway) and give the buff a stun proc on attacks with, say, a 20% chance.

Lv5 - The Stars Aligned
With Southern Cross to pin monsters in place so you can slip in between them and AoE grind them with this spell, I don't really think you need to change it anymore.

Fleshsmithing
Lv0 - Zombyfication
The Zombie isn't even as good as the mustache golem. I see nothing wrong with having it from the get go. It's certainly not going to be useful much past DL1 and has no place at Lv. 4. Halve the MP cost.

Lv1 - Fleshbore
Given how useful Piercing damage is against many enemies in the late game, I'd let this scale a little bit faster. Maybe 0.35.

Lv2 - Knit Tissue
This spell is pretty much perfect. I would only raise the starting cost to 20MP and the minimum cost to 9MP. Healing should be a little more expensive than other spells, IMO.

Lv3 - Meat Shield
Guess what? I wouldn't have a brittle on this buff either. It should also drain 1MP/6 turns. Double the bonus and raise the HP bonus to 10, change for , tweak the cost and I think you have a winner.

Lv4 - Corpus Burst
Given all the restrictions on the original Corpus Burst, I really think it should be a better spell. Make it deal the corpus burst damage on initial cast, then leave a Miasmatic Purification in the 3x3 area. Make the MP cost an even 20.

Lv5 - Mass Zombyfi
Take the spell template for The Stars Aligned. Make a spell that casts Zombyfication once on every valid target square in that area. Then buff every Undead taxa creature in that area with a buff that gives +30 and +8. The undead are more useful in numbers than in quality. Let the fleshsmither enjoy that fact.

Blood Mage
While I'm not entirely sure what I would do to vary the skill, I would change it so that every level gave you a 5% chance of giving a +1HP buff for 40 turns when something dies. Then the first level skill would allow you to take a -6HP buff for 50 turns to get 12+0.15 MP. The debuff should not be removable by decurse effects. Second level would probably give you a chance of getting the +1HP buff in melee, much like the current Vital Siphon does. Capstone might give you a 10% chance for the positive buff and a skill to cleanse the debuff with a 150 turn cooldown. Thus, juggling buffs and debuffs to create mana would actually be interesting and powerful, as opposed to the current bugged version which is boring and overpowered, or the fixed version, which looks to be boring and kinda weak.

 

Vampirism:

1. Effects every target, not just animals etc.

1. Corpse Eater scales based on DL//CL.]

1. Vampirism is now diamonds.

 

... Isn't that every vanilla ability? Didn't mean that as sarcasm, I actually agree with a lot of that, and so do a lot of people. Which is why we all diggle Core Rebalance.

I diggle everything you said. And that has nothing to do with the fact that if you do make those changes, I'm going to use all 3 in a melee mage build. Which, of course, no one believes, but they want to melee mage too, so they'll look the other way.

HOWEVER

Rather than replace the code, how about we kill it instead. With fire, preferably. Even though, i'd settle for a knife, if fire cannot be arranged.
Jokes aside, I am not against an item giving you a buff, however good it might be. The price of said item, or the effects of the buff can always be rebalanced later on. However, no item should give you the exact same ability (buff or otherwise) that a skill tree gives you. Items can be bought, stockpiled, crafted, etc irrespective of what skills you have. Having an item that gives you access to a skill, however weak, essentially makes the entire tree less appealing. Of course, an item that lets you have a near capstone ability essentially breaks the tree alltogether, which is why PGGB needs killing pronto, but the principle holds regardless.

I think that bloodmage is conceptually broken. For what it does, if the numbers are too high, then its essentially game breaking. If the numbers are too low, it does nothing. Rather than try to find some kind of sweet spot, we should try to rework it instead.

My take on bloodmage (we keep the -Righteous damage throughout, because the penalty is not too bad, and we love the flavor anyway) would be something along the lines of

Level 0
BLOOD!!!
"The sight/smell/taste of blood makes the blood of the blood-thirsty warrior flow faster. As you might expect, it makes the mana of the blood-thirsty mage flow faster instead. If that does make sense to you, then you are probably not cut out for this magic business to begin with."

Whenever you are in combat (i.e. take/deal damage), you get a stackable Mana-regen buff for a few turns. The general idea is that the more time you spend in melee (which is bound to happen once your mana starts running low, of if you are a melee-mage to begin with), then the more mana you get back.

Level 1
THEIR BLOOD!!!
While having a vamp ability of some description is interesting, the %proc aspect makes me a bit leery. The reason for this is because if you are playing a mage-centric build, then you are by definition someone that takes a lot of risks by being in melee range. Introducing EXTRA risk with something that "may or may not work" makes for an ability that is difficult to justify taking. Therefore, I would propose something along the lines of an active melee nuke that steals hp, but has X-turn cooldown and damage/scaling figures that reflect the fact that this is a level 2 nuke that HEALS. It is also here to compensate for the fact that blood mages generally have more mana than they need. Flavor text and numbers for this and subsequent abilities TBD, assuming someone wants to make something out of this.

Level 2
MY BLOOD!!!
A costly renewable buff that adds HP/Regen, decreases Armor, damages nearby enemies whenever you take damage, and improves the rate at which the level 0 buff stacks. The general idea is to have something that increases the risk/reward of being melee, while still giving a "guaranteed" bonus to hp regen. The "costly" renewable buff would be to AGAIN give blood mages something within the actual tree to sink mana into.

Level 3
BLOOD EVERYWHERE!!!
Ignore the name - this is essentially spawn phila. However, instead of just pouring your soul and blood, you should instead pour your soul and blood INTO SOMETHING ELSE. If said ability kills the victim, presumably by causing to explode, and said victim had blood to begin with, then that should spawn a phila. Costs Mana/HP and debuffs the user, we keep the cooldown very high, but this is essentially your BIG BANG ability.

Level 4
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD MAGE!!!
Essentially, I think spirit stealer is great, but again the %proc aspect makes me leery. If you are going to rely on this as a nuke booster, then it should be reliable. However, a reliable nuke booster is definitely too good as a level 2 ability. So yeah, make it 100%, but move it to capstone status. Perhaps make the buff give you a +damage that scales off , just to nudge people into going melee to maximise their benefits from it. Since Level 1 and 3 and going to be melee nukes, this will also boost their effectiveness substantially.

 

The Developers have yet to remove game content except in one case I can think of, Deadshot. That was a very extreme case. In tinkering with their work, I feel my attitude should mimic theirs, so I'm loath to propose the removal of PGGB. From your argument Greedy Bluecaps, not to mention those little levers in the Dark Forces room, shouldn't give a vampirism ability just because Necronomiceconomics and Vampirism do too, yet they manage to fill the same niche. It's true that having the exact same persistent buff is a little different, but a base level buff is much different from a 3rd/4th level buff. Having Radiant Aura on PGGB would not be nearly as problematic for Astrology has having Syzergy. Particularly if the other effects of the tree are enhanced. However, I could see downgrading the booze to having the Radiant Potion effect, too. It would just then seem very weak for such a high level booze.

 

All weapon skills so they have more potential than just attacking. It sucks when you put 6 points into axes only to find a sword with 50 damage. If all weapon skills had more to go for than just stats and a single special attack they would be much more viable.

Also, crafting skills in the way of either many more reagents dropping OR much fewer requirements (especiall fewer different requirements) for individual items. Also, sorting options! MANY more sorting options!

I like the rest of the skills and I find even Astrology to be balanced pretty nicely, though somewhat more specific according to build.

Edit: Also, were diggle needs MANY more interesting skills, even at level 1.

 

As I have said a dozen times already in other threads, the best fix for crafting is to make the crafting components not usage by themselves with a useful benefit into numbers like zorkmids are handled. They should not even be droppable. No more inventory clutter would make crafting a thousand times better.

As for sorting, I rather like it the way it is.

I would agree that WereDiggle is a pretty awful skill as it is. It was a good idea, but it needs some work. Others are doubtlessly far better at fixing that sort of thing, since I have only used it a few times and absolutely hated it.

There are probably several dozen threads where the bulk of the content is discussions about how to fix weapon skills. The Devs do read this stuff for the most part. They will decide.

 

If you actually believe that it's only a little different, we'll have to agree to disagree on that. As for the devs being loathe to delete content, it's not hard to see why they would be loathe to do that. After all, they make a living doing this, and deleting content outright is essentially akin to tossing however many hours of work into the bin. Considering hours of work = money, that's pretty much tossing money into the bin.
However, that doesn't excuse poor content. I have no issue with PGGB having a high level buff. No problem whatsoever. I have no issue with it being permanent, either. However, I do mind the fact that it simply recycles an ability that exists elsewhere. How hard is it to make a UNIQUE buff for PGGB? For example, you could make it apply a buff that causes you to deal a reality shattering burb after X turns. The so called PANGALACTIC GARGLE BLAST (causes aoe damage, knockback, black holes, and what have you).

I do appreciate your point though. I am not going to argue that booze or food need to be removed from the game because they make trees that heal or regen mana redundant. Similarly, vampirism is such a core part of every RPG that it would be unrealistic to say that THIS tree should be the ONLY way have a vampirism ability. However, you do need to draw the line somewhere, and PGGB is where I draw the line. Especially in a context where the ability to mod allows us to know that this would not have taken an extra million line of codes.

 

The last sentence of that paragraph is the only one I feel I even understand. The first two have me really puzzled. What exactly are you trying to say?

 

I think that what he means is that you pick up, say, an iron ingot, and it gets added to a list of reagents that don't take up inventory space. Sort of like your Zorkmid counter.

So you'd open your list, and see something on the lines of "iron ingot x1" on it.

 

There are also typos there... Shame on me.

What I mean is that things like Ingots and gems should be picked up and not added to the inventory. Rather they should add to a number that is only used by the crafting tools. Things that are crafting components, but also have a purpose outside of crafting obviously need to remain available for use as an inventory item.

*Edit* lccorp2 beat me to it.

 

And what implications would this have on the game itself?

As far as I can see, from the 4 seconds I had to think about this between reading your post and writing this, this will hurt any non-crafter pretty bad along with almost any crafter who doesnt use several crafting skills at the same time. On top of that, how about all the items which are both useable and part of recipies as reagents? Your suggestion may seem like a solution but in reality it is opening up for a host of other, must harsher, problems.

 

What Shadowplay said. I sell my platinum, even when I am a crafter. o_o

 

IMO, Crafting SHOULD be a tradeoff between power (which you forego by getting it instead of w/e ability you'd have gotten instead) and randomness (which is essentially what crafting removes - RNG dependence for the stuff you want). You balance crafting by affecting either power or randomness.

That being said, convenience in terms of inventory management does not quite qualify as a "loss of power" in my book. The reason for this being that items in DoD do not disappear after X turns (at least not to my knowledge). I.e. you can stash all the items you need to craft in one room of X floor, and come back for it when you need it. It's not convenient for sure, but it only takes what? 1 minute to backtrack each time? And you'll only backtrack a few times, so yeah, it's not THAT bad.
Getting more invent space would be a small quality of life improvement, but it would not FIX actual disbalance issues caused by say, Dwarven Delivery Posts, which mean that you will invariably find better items than you can make. This is of course mitigated by monsters that cause corruption, which is also why I don't like abilities that mitigate corruption btw.

However, nerfing DDP is about nerfing the REST OF THE GAME to compensate for the weakness of a small part of it, which is generally not the way to go.

So let's look at ways to work with "power loss" vs. "less randomness" within the tree.

Power loss

1) Simply make more of the higher tier items crafting unique. As simple as that. That way, even if you are able to find enchanted items via. chests of evil and what not, you should still be able to craft items that, by virtue of being higher tier, should still be able to hold their own vs. those enchanted items.
2) Give more +stats to the crafting trees - Usually not a good idea to go overboard with, because that adds even more guaranteed power to a tree that is all about guaranteeing power (remember that crafting guarantees that you will be able to get w/e item you want. Admitedly you can still stumble upon said item, but with crafting, it is more a matter of time than a matter of luck)
3) Because items that you find are better mostly because of your ability to find enchanted ones, giving crafting trees the ability to craft enchanted items (by allowing them to have a castable anvil of krong like ability, for example) will compensate for that.
4) Giving crafters sources of extra EXP also works, because they expend level ups on abilities that, in the long term, will not give as much power non-crafting abilities. Extra EXP from kills mitigates the power loss from having less non-crafting trees by letting them grab their non-crafting trees sooner, or getting non-crafting trees with more abilities.

Generally speaking, adding power to crafting trees is a dicey proposition, because this approach will typically guarantee even more power to a tree that is inherently ABOUT guaranteeing power via. randomness removal. Bear in mind that if a tree gives an average amount of power (relative to other trees) AND removes randomness from the game, then you have an OP Tree.

Less Randomness

1) Letting you re-roll ingredients. Currently, we can do that for gems and shrooms (admitedly, that's not within a crafting tree, but you get the idea). Letting you do that for other core crafting items like ingots would add some extra power (because you can re-roll the items for something of higher value), but overall, the extra is neglible because Crafters typically consume more items for crafting purposes than non-crafters. In any case, that can be balanced by adjusting the cost ingots and what not, so it is not too much of a big deal.
2) Letting you re-roll dispensers. Yep, you read that right. If each tree let you re-roll crafting dispensers say, one time per tree, then that would go a long way towards eliminating randomness from the game. It would also not be overly OP, because a lot of the higher tier items also forbidding prices at lower levels, and also tend to be hidden recipes as well.
3) Letting you get more crafting items. Level 2 of most crafting trees already do that, so it would be best not to dabble in this too much.
4) Letting you "recycle" items for part of their "generic" components. E.g. Say you already have a steel sword, and you find another steel sword. You would be able to turn said steel sword into say, 1-2 steel ingots. That would have to be an ability or a high level reciple (but that would cause clutter, so I do not really like it - the other option probably involves silly amounts of coding though, so yeah, that's also something to think about).

Generally speaking, I prefer options that decrease randomness over options that increase power. I like the idea of Crafting specific high tier items though, because that partly mitigates the late game damage disparity between builds that include crafting, and builds that don't without making the early game easier for crafters, or harder for non-crafters. Aside from that, I decreasing randomness is interesting PRECISELY because it doesn't translate into OUTRIGHT power. Yes, if we increase the RNG mitigation potential of crafting you will have an easier time getting the items you want. However, less RNG does not mean NO RNG. This gives you a much broader lee-way in terms of what you can do, which is why we can afford to consider dabbling with things as outrageous as re-rolling ingredients, or re-rolling dispensers.

 

I'd just like to point out that there are no such guarantees for many of the desireable items you can craft. Because recepie acquisition is random. Sometimes it's even a craftable in the middle of a chain that's missing(see alchemy staves, the first two in the chain and the final one are recepies given from the start, but the third step is random chance).

 

^If you are running vanilla, yes. If you are running RR/Faxpax/ID, you shouldn't have that problem. That being said, I have no idea how I missed that - I actually thought about it, then didn't write it down. Turns out, thinking about it does not write it down. Funny how that works. Thanks for the heads up though. Definitely should have made that explicit.

 

Shadowplay, I use 17 mods. Several of them are multiple mods merged, like FaxPax, and Roguish Renovations. The reason I mention this is that there are *LOTS* of new items added, yet no inventory space added. So if you do not have an inventory problem I am happy for you. But that in no way negates the major headache I have.

Lorrelian, I am sorry. Is money actually a problem for you? I have never sold a crafting component. If I do not use it, I drop it and keep going. I could bother to pick up all the stuff and sell off the valuable ones, but by mid game you should be swimming in zorkmids, even if you never sell anything.

 

I sense some anger. Do not give in to the dark side, young padawan. I am sure the diggle gods have heard your prayers, and you will get your extra invent space in the next patch (if it isn't there, I will be bloody annoyed, because goddamnit, i run double digit mods too, and juggling all the recipes at once just isn't manageable atm)

 

I am not angry. I just want to make it clear in case others are not using so many mods.

I should also point out that another mod I am using is not a multi-mod, but has 30 added items. (Interior Dredmorating)