The Compleat Essential Skills

Discussion in 'Mod Releases' started by Essence, Mar 26, 2012.

  1. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    OK, another new release, this one MIGHT help Poisoneer's slowdown. I also went through and made a few other minor changes. Notably, Wild Magic's various nukes now have a 25% chance each to be:
    1) Template 100
    2) Template 101
    3) An 8-square area in all directions
    4) A random template chosen from all loaded templateDBs.

    Have fun with that. :)
     
    OmniaNigrum and Kazeto like this.
  2. necronomist

    necronomist Member

    Found a small bug in 'Fake it till you make it'; it doesn't grand a level in Wand crafting because it uses the old secondarybuff for Wand Affinity rather than Wand Crafting (value is 15, should be 23).

    Edit: Also, is there any way I could fix this in my current save? Any edits I do to the save file do not seem to stick.
     
    Kazeto and OmniaNigrum like this.
  3. Kazuhiro

    Kazuhiro Member

    Wild Magic nukes doing ANY RANDOM template?

    But... ASCII Invasion.

    I'm... so scared. But I do approve of Wild Magic turning into something dangerous as well as random.

    The theorycrafter in me is confused by Gangam Style. It's a Warrior skill that gives you the things that other characters use to make up for lack of Warrior-ness? Why do I want a nuke on a tree that gives Warrior levels?

    I will examine it more closely and see if I can make one of those "overkill synergy" builds I like so much.



    hi guys i have a new computer im back now
     
  4. OmniaNigrum

    OmniaNigrum Member

    Open the save directory and you see the mods there. Those were copied from the mods usual location in case you updated one or more while playing and the update could have broke your save. So you can try editing that copy and reloading the game. It may work, but I cannot be sure. Good luck!

    *Edit* To clarify, the copy in your save directory never changes on its own. Not even if you edit the copy it was made from. So change both of them if you want this fixed. If it cannot seem to retroactively fix it, then sorry, but you are stuck with it like that.
     
    Kazeto likes this.
  5. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    Thanks for the bug catch, necro! I'll get that fixed and reupload shortly.
     
    OmniaNigrum likes this.
  6. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks


    Gangnam Style is the warrior side of something like Viking Magic. It's best used either as the finishing touch on an otherwise solid gish build or as a way to add some much-needed unsquishiness to a straight mage. The powers, you'll notice, at the beginning require you to be in melee combat but then allow you to evade a lot of hits (sidestepping, incapacitating with lasso stance, or straight up leaving the building with Venue Change), then move on to sheer power blows (Gale/Assassins/Boom!) at later levels. I've come as close as I've been in a year to punching Dredmor in the face with:

    Gangnam Style
    Vampirism
    Killer Vegan
    Magical Law
    Communism
    Fleshsmithing
    Blood Magic

    The basic idea being that Gangnam Style provides teleports, pets, and nukes, so everything else could be some form of either punch-you-in-the-face power or sheer utility. It worked like a charm until I lost my main save to a crash and my autosave to a change in the CES code at the same time -- halfway through floor 10, without having seen Dredmor yet. :(
     
    Kazeto and OmniaNigrum like this.
  7. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    New upload: Silver Tongue now treats Wandcrafting properly.
     
    OmniaNigrum likes this.
  8. Kazuhiro

    Kazuhiro Member

    Having looked at it, I understand now.

    Gangam Style demands a warrior, but it also demands mana. Does it also /scale/ with wizard shit?

    It is far more powerful than QiGong or Viking Magic, in exchange for the very major restriction of Gangam Beat.

    I'm going to make a Silver Tongue Gangam Ninja. I've been wanting to stay away from Ninjutsu after that ridiculous run with a face-stomping Drunken Unarmed Vegan Ninja, but this is too perfect. I can't wait to see how this combines.

    I am going to make an active effort NOT to abuse Ninjutsu's "vanish when you dodge" effect. If it still ends up carrying me anyway because of all my rogue levels...

    We'll see.
     
    Kazeto and OmniaNigrum like this.
  9. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    Yes, it (at least the nukes) scale with Magic Power. And please, keep me informed about the progress of your Gangnam Ninja. Silver Tongue is probably the one skill that's gotten the least feedback of all of them, and I'd like to know what happens when someone tries to abuse it. :)
     
    Kazeto and OmniaNigrum like this.
  10. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    Not to be pedantic, but I don't suppose the workshop version could get an update, too?
     
    OmniaNigrum and Kazeto like this.
  11. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    Oh, yeah! Good idea. :)

    [edit]Aaaaand...done![/edit]
     
    OmniaNigrum likes this.
  12. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    Another minor point: how do you think is the balance on the poisoner pools? They seem to last just a little too long - get enough of them rolling, and I can pretty much skip turns while letting a zoo kill itself by running into me.
     
    OmniaNigrum and Kazeto like this.
  13. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    Hmm...didn't think about them stacking. :|

    What, maybe 17 turns?
     
    OmniaNigrum likes this.
  14. Kazuhiro

    Kazuhiro Member

    Silver Tongue is amazing, though I've never really worked on a build for it because I imagine most people don't play the keep away rogue that silver tongue is for.

    I'm able to stack the Gangam Style stances. With themselves. I somehow feel like this was not intended behavior.
     
  15. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    Um. How did I not notice that? LOL.

    I'll have to fix it tomorrow, it's bed time. :)
     
  16. Turbo164

    Turbo164 Member

    Fits the source material. Ever opened multiple Gangam youtube windows a few seconds apart? :p
     
    Kazeto likes this.
  17. Kazuhiro

    Kazuhiro Member

    The Gangam Style build I"m working on looks something like this:

    Gangam--a knockback, a pet, an amazing escape, and a really good nuke, but eats mana like crazy and requires melee
    Blood--Duh.
    Sword--Because it works very well with Gangam Style and because this is a mixed-up character.
    Ninja--I just like using this with characters who somehow manage to synergize with Genjutsu, Taijutsu, AND Kuji-Kiri.
    Bowie--This skill is pretty rad, but it's lousy at keep-away. Thus.
    Drama--I've never actually pursued this tree, but again, it's got these cool features that don't seem to click into each other and create a build on their own. That's why I'm putting it on a build that pretty much DOES EVERYTHING.
    Pony--

    This is of course complete overkill. What I should do is be satisfied with the variety, utility, and synergy in Gangam/Ninja/Bowie and dump Drama/Pony because this is a lot of levels and I'm not seriously going to take them all.

    But I figure I want to try all these skills so I may as well have them there.

    One thing I've noticed is how weird the Sideways Shuffle is. It's a kiting skill that demands a melee character, which is all fucked up. I'm thinking that this'll be nice for giving me turns with which to cast Bowiemancer spells.
     
    Kazeto likes this.
  18. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    New upload fixes stacking Gangnam Dances and also balances out the final level of Ninjitsu a little bit -- rather than only eating 1 HP/turn, it eats 5% of your HP/turn.
     
    Kazeto likes this.
  19. Nandorianen

    Nandorianen Member

    Hi. I love your skills. And your skill trees. Wanted to tell you that.
    Also I thought I'd give you some feedback on Archmage. Since I remembered that you love feedback.

    Well, first of all, it's a very vast tree in terms of content. You can kill, heal, buff, debuff, create walls, dig, make mines, create booze and mushrooms, summon pets and get yourself killed. And that's just 3 spells we are talking about. Sure, it's pretty tricky to use all this stuff. I even had to create pretty big .txt with detailed and structured description of everything all spells do in all modes, etc. Also it overlaps, so you can't always get what you want when you want it. And many effects have downsides like not being able to digest anything while regenerating. But still, if you think about it, you could almost walk around with this tree alone. When I create a wizard and pick skills for him, I usually think in terms of required effects. Like "I need something for mana, something to heal myself, something to place between me and monsters, something to kill them, something to protect myself from spells", etc. Then go compromises: more damage variety or a teleport? Well, Archmage has so many useful effects (that usually you have to pick a whole tree to have) that you are not required to compromise much. For example, I picked Golemancy with Archmage before I read all the details. I picked Golemancy because: early pets, unliving wall, thaumites, digging ray. Well, Archmage only lacks early pets from this list. And for this I could have picked something else.
    That said, I don't know if something should be done about it. If you just remove something, it would start to kill variability that this tree is all about. Maybe just replace some effects with another so that you could look at each mage tree and say to yourself "I would definitely feel that this tree is useful when paired with Archmage". Or maybe this effects just shouldn't be as powerful as their "original" counterparts. Or be too costly to use often.

    I haven't actually tried modal magic yet, but I read about what it does. And this immediately pops into mind: efficient magic gives you Savvy in exchange for penalties. You also gain Savvy naturally and from True Arcane Glory. So over time this mode becomes useless, since Savvy has a limits of effectiveness. At this point you will gain nothing, yet lose something in this mode. So maybe it should work like enhanced magic? By adding something to your mana on cast? This amount can scale with Savvy, but it will not lose it's effectiveness over time. However, it could become possible to cast cheap spells for free or even to restore mana with them.

    Next, the rituals. They are awesome. The idea of infinite progress is what made me choose this tree in the first place. I don't like caps on my stats. However, there are some metaproblems with them.
    1. Arcane Consecration Step I keeps popping up even when I have Glorious Power active. I want it active at all times and I rarely lose it. So it's an annoyance to have your buff list shuffled every 2 turns. Is it possible to prevent it from triggering when you already have Glorious Power?
    2. When I kill someone with Elder Eyes active, my game crashes very often. I have to save and backup several times to go through a single Zoo. Nothing else has crashed my game so consistently (except corrupted Pocket Dimension and Stairs, of course). It seems like 5-10% chance for CTD on kill with Elders watching. I'm not sure, but it seems that normal kills are not the case, it's them Elder kills (the ones that would give me my +1 Sagacity) that are crash-prone. Could you take a quick look and see if it's a problem with the code?
    3. When I save or get an autosave, I lose all mana that I gained from Elder Boons' Sagacity boni. Considering that I have to save very often due to problem #2, it's very annoying. Although logically it's most probably a problem with how the game handles it, not with the mod.
    4. I've got lots of Elder Boons and Arcane Glories stacked. I hoped that at some point these stacks would stop to grow visually, but they haven't. It's really ridiculous, they already block a few tiles completely, and it'll only get worse. I guess power has it's drawbacks. I understand that this complaint should be addressed to devs, but it will be ages before it is patched up, if at all, seeing how busy they are with the new game. So maybe you have some ideas about that? Maybe I can mod my UI code somehow, or you could think about different implementation? For example, transforming 10 stacks of +1 buffs into 1 stack of +10 would help immensely. Although it would add yet another buff icon on the screen. Damn, UI for buffs needs reworking.

    Well, that about covers it. Sorry about lots of complaining. And words, for that matter.
     
    mining, Kazeto, Daynab and 1 other person like this.
  20. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    Please, please don't apologize -- that's exactly the kind of feedback that every modder should pray for. :D

    To address your points in order:

    -1) I think making the spells more costly might be a good idea.
    0) Modal Magic replacing mana rather than increasing Savvy...sure, why not?
    1) Easy-peasy. I'll put a requirebuffonnottrigger on ACS1 so that it won't pop up if you have Glorious Power on.
    2) Never had that happen to me. I'll look into it. Do you regularly play with the speed turned up?
    3) Yeah, that's unfortunately not anything I can do anything about. :( Probably happens going up/down stairs, too.
    4) There's an open Suggestions thread about that, but yeah, for now I guess it's just the price you pay for Ultimate Cosmic Power: an itty-bitty playing space. :p

    I'll whip up those easy changes and start exploring what might be causing your crash. Thank you SO MUCH!!