Nullpack 2019-02-21: Gravitic Infantry

[Doctornull]

Nullpack v17 is a BETA for 1.0.5e

Please ignore it if you're not playing ToME 1.0.5e or later.

If you are playing ToME 1.0.5e or later, please let me know if you experience any issues with Nullpack v17!

New content includes TWO new Brawler classes:
- Transcendent Fist, a melee-monk guy with a TK gem or mindstar focus, very flexible about bonus damage but he needs to get Combo Points to trigger the good stuff in his new tree.
- Fossil, a melee-arcane guy for Skeletons only who combines the Brawler base with Arcane Blade, plus Earth and Stone. Yeah, you need a lot of stats, but Skeletons are good at that, and that's why the class is Skeleton only. No new trees. Skeletons hate trees.

EDIT:
The Trancendent Fist benefits greatly from the New Gems addon, which I've adopted here:
http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/new-gems

[Doctornull]

Nullpack v18 is a BETA for 1.0.5e

This version uses all the "i500" infinite scaling functions for all talents, so everything should work right even at the ridiculously high levels which 1.0.5 supports.

Also fixed a bug in Transcendent Fist, the first skill Far Strike did not always target correctly. Now it does.

Enjoy!

[DarWinsEdge]

Found a problem with the Heavy start. You didn't give the heavy a pickaxe in their starting gear. If you choose to do the beginning quest in the starting zone you have to face a enemies which can teleport you to a part of the map cut off from the exit with no way to get back. Since the only teleport available to an early heavy (unless you pick a race that starts with a phase door rune) requires line of sight in order to work if you happen to get stuck on the other side of a wall from the exit with no enemies (to teleport you back) you have to port back to the starting temporal town and end up failing the quest. Quite annoying.

Other than that, acetic and striker have almost no damage in early game nightmare, so little as to practically be unviable. The problem is that unlike other weapons, staves with +damage on hit are stupidly rare early game compared to the other weapon types. Since neither ascetic nor striker focuses on strength as a main stat the 1 handed and 2 handed axes, swords, and maces are out cause of the strength requirements. That leaves daggers, which would still need lethality (cunning instead of strength mod on daggers) to really be anything decent on the two classes. Plus, it's just silly having to start out using a weapon OTHER than a staff early game since both classes rely on melee staff combat heavily and are built around it. Staff combat starts out stupidly weak and neither has access to any early damage buff skills or heavy nukes. Strikers lightning port thing does decent damage but it's on too long a CD and is too risky to use as a main nuke. Easiest solution would be to replace one of the Acetic's starting unlocked trees (and come on now they start with like 20 trees unlocked XD) with the enhancement tree unlocked and giving striker the air tree unlocked to start.

[Doctornull]

Found a problem with the Heavy start. You didn't give the heavy a pickaxe in their starting gear. If you choose to do the beginning quest in the starting zone you have to face a enemies which can teleport you to a part of the map cut off from the exit with no way to get back. Since the only teleport available to an early heavy (unless you pick a race that starts with a phase door rune) requires line of sight in order to work if you happen to get stuck on the other side of a wall from the exit with no enemies (to teleport you back) you have to port back to the starting temporal town and end up failing the quest. Quite annoying.

That is annoying, and easy to fix.

The same issue should apply to the other two Chronomancers, though. I wonder if .5 changed the Unhallowed Morass generation algorithm?

Other than that, acetic and striker have almost no damage in early game nightmare, so little as to practically be unviable. The problem is that unlike other weapons, staves with +damage on hit are stupidly rare early game compared to the other weapon types. Since neither ascetic nor striker focuses on strength as a main stat the 1 handed and 2 handed axes, swords, and maces are out cause of the strength requirements. That leaves daggers, which would still need lethality (cunning instead of strength mod on daggers) to really be anything decent on the two classes. Plus, it's just silly having to start out using a weapon OTHER than a staff early game since both classes rely on melee staff combat heavily and are built around it. Staff combat starts out stupidly weak and neither has access to any early damage buff skills or heavy nukes. Strikers lightning port thing does decent damage but it's on too long a CD and is too risky to use as a main nuke. Easiest solution would be to replace one of the Acetic's starting unlocked trees (and come on now they start with like 20 trees unlocked XD) with the enhancement tree unlocked and giving striker the air tree unlocked to start.

Enhancement is in-theme for the Ascetic. Sold!

The Striker can never have Air, though. Ranged no-risk nukes from Stealth is broken on Normal, and I can't sacrifice Normal play for Nightmare play.

Are you using the darkness-on-hit sustain from the 1st Shadow Magic skill? That should give the Striker a bit of extra damage, even if it's more expensive than Fiery Hands in terms of Mana per hit.

[mordecai]

DoctorNull!

First, love the addon, quite enjoyed playing a Heavy and compare/contrast to a Bulwark. Still need to complete that game

Second, when I use your addon, I seem to lose access to non-unique pairing mindstars.

I lose all the Wyrmic based mindstars but keep the summoner and cursed based mindstars.

Keep: Caller/Summoner
Lose: Frost/Sand/Flames/Storm

They get replaced with summer/winter mindstars that do not pair.

I think I have narrowed it down to your addon but it is playing havoc with my Solipsist builds to not get any decent mindstars Can you take a look? Might be some sort of addon overlap as well. Let me know if you cannot find it and I will start exploring synergy options

Thanks again for all the hard work!

[Doctornull]

Second, when I use your addon, I seem to lose access to non-unique pairing mindstars.

I lose all the Wyrmic based mindstars but keep the summoner and cursed based mindstars.

Keep: Caller/Summoner
Lose: Frost/Sand/Flames/Storm

They get replaced with summer/winter mindstars that do not pair.

I think I have narrowed it down to your addon but it is playing havoc with my Solipsist builds to not get any decent mindstars Can you take a look? Might be some sort of addon overlap as well. Let me know if you cannot find it and I will start exploring synergy options

Summer / Winter ought to work along side Frost / Sand / Flames / etc.

However, the rarity weights of Flames etc. are high, and the level weights of Flames etc. start at level 30... are you seeing them at levels 30-50? Or are you expecting them sooner?

If you used to see them sooner, that might just be because the Mindstar ego code had so few egos to choose from, so it had to go deep into the "wrong" levels and high rarity.

That said, if you're level 30 and you NEVER saw a Flames etc. Mindstar, then that's certainly my bug, and I'll try to replicate it. Please let me know!

---

Nullpack v19 released, should validate with 1.0.5

[Doctornull]

Second, when I use your addon, I seem to lose access to non-unique pairing mindstars.

I lose all the Wyrmic based mindstars but keep the summoner and cursed based mindstars.

Summer / Winter ought to work along side Frost / Sand / Flames / etc.

However, the rarity weights of Flames etc. are high, and the level weights of Flames etc. start at level 30... are you seeing them at levels 30-50? Or are you expecting them sooner?

I see what you mean -- there are Flame / Sand / etc. but not nearly as many as before.

I can adjust the rarity weights on Summer / Winter / etc. and then the others ought to show up more often.

[mordecai]

Thank you sir!

Again, thanks for all the hard work!

[Doctornull]

Thank you sir!

Again, thanks for all the hard work!

Nullpack v20 is now up. It ought to fix this issue, please let me know!

---

Also in v20:
- The Heavy's artifact shield Timekeeper now improves as you level.
- Two new artifacts.

[mordecai]

Timekeeper improves as I level? Off to play a heavy again, shelving my Ghoul Melee Mindslayer

[mordecai]

DoctorNull,
Just ran into a game corrupting issue with the Heavy and the Timekeeper shield.

Lua Error: /data-nullpack/general/special-artifacts.lua:67: attempt to Index global 'DamageType' (a nil value)
at [C]:-1_index
at /data-nullpack/general/special-artifacts.lua:67
at /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:82 tick
at /engine/GameTurnBased.lua:46 tick
at /mod/class/game.lua:1133

I purchased the training room, loaded a dummy, hit it a couple of times then switched weapon sets. Upon switching I got the above error then a continual indexing error whenever I tried to do anything ... save, replace the shield, remove the shield, etc... My main shield (Titanic) was removed from the shield slot and not present in my inventory and I purchased a shield to see if I could pull the Timekeeper out of the equip slot. I could but it showed the new shield in the inventory slot and in my inventory. I could actually equip it in main and secondary sets and it still remained in my inventory.

I killed the TOME process and restarted the game, purchased the training room and tried again, it happened a second time.

Additionally, it reset the fog of war on the main map and removed my access to the mage city and to the fortress portal after I restarted the last save so something was corrupted. I could still recall but the portal was not visible on the main map. I'll keep the game in case you want to see it. Let me know!

PS. Why so much hate from the training room against the Timekeeper? It must not like the Paradox

PPS Love the Heavy, happy to continue playtesting it

[Doctornull]

DoctorNull,
Just ran into a game corrupting issue with the Heavy and the Timekeeper shield.

I think I found the bug, it's that I neglected to require DamageTypes in my lua file... odd that it works at all.

I'll see if I can validate the fix, and upload a new version tonight.

Thanks for the bug report!

[Doctornull]

I've just posted Nullpack v21 which ought to fix the Timekeeper issue EDIT BUT THERE IS ANOTHER ISSUE goddamn it another reference is being nil'd, I'll have a fix up soon.

I guess Lua doesn't support closures? I'm now doing the external file import inside the act() function since the context in which the function had been defined didn't seem to be the same context in which the function later executed... and the later context lacked the ability to reference DamageType.

[Doctornull]

Alright, I replaced the .teaa for v21 with fixed lua files.

If you downloaded it earlier, please replace that with the one that's up now. (If your v21 won't validate, replace it.)

Please let me know if this one works better!

Cheers!

[mordecai]

I will give it a go tonight