In the most recent version:
Respec Tuning
There is now an option to enable "Custom" Respec limits. This means that you can choose how many Class or Generic points to re-assign (instead of being limited to 4 or 3 respectively). You are still limited to only changing points while safely in town or on levels which contain no enemies. Hopefully enemies in vaults are ignored, but there may be bugs in enemy generation.
Cosmetic Fixes
New duller icon for Elm Staff, so it's visually distinct from a Yew Staff, even when the icon is small.
This is important when shopping.
Timed Effects
An option will toggle this fix. The fix is to change the on_merge behavior of some timed effects to use the maximum of (old duration, new duration) rather than their average duration (old+new)/2. This results in less wonky results from multiple different burn effects, and results in more sensible behavior when you are suffering from an effect which is about to expire.
For example, in the old code if you had 1 turn left of being on fire, any new Burning duration would be halved (and the damage per turn DOUBLED). When you are being set on fire by multiple opponents, like a pack of fire dragons, this can result in silly and unintended damage per turn.
The fix is to always use the maximum duration. In both cases total damage is conserved: if you would suffer from 100 total fire damage, you will still suffer from 100 total fire damage either way.
Affected effects are: Burning, Cut, Wasting, Manasurge, and Restless Night. REMOVED Lightburn, it turns out to be incompatible, but I could add it back in if there's demand.
Wards
The Ward talent granted by torques, totems and staves is now instant-cast, and the duration (always 10 turns) is displayed in the talent info text.
Torques and Totems
Totems:
- Combined Healing, Poison and Illness into new
Healing, which now also cures 2 poison or disease effects. Same long cooldown and generally inferior healing as before. Changed level range to make these available from level 1.
- New totem type
Cleansing which removes 1-5 magical debuffs from the target.
- Wards will now ward against Cold, Fire or Blight.
- Natural now grants Equilibrium when you are hit.
- Forceful now grants Stamina when you are hit.
Torques:
- Hateful now increases your maximum Hate.
- Psionic now grants a bonus to Psi regeneration.
Cunning
Re-write of
Cunning / Poisons:
- All Poisons are now instant-activation timed effects. Why? Three reasons:
- 1) Promote tactical use. You can't just run the same two poisons all the time, and neither can your opponents. Out-waiting an opponent's Poison is now a valid tactic.
- 2) Buff Shalore. Timeless is now great for Rogues, yay!
- 3) Allow more nuance, like how the low Stamina cost and quick Cooldown means you'll actually want to use Deadly Poison sometimes.
- NEW BONUS REASON: Replace Stoning Poison with Vitrification Poison: transform a portion of your opponent's body into glass, which lowers its physical damage resistance and its armour hardiness. This poison inflicts Physical damage.
New Inscriptions (and removed some lame inscriptions):
-
Rune: Reconstruction (was Infusion: Healing). Same inferior healing, now available to undead! Also cures one Cut or Wound effect. Wyrmics who stay pro-magic now have an interesting choice.
-
Rune: Clarity removes 2 Blindness or Confusion conditions, grants type-specific ESP, and each turn has a % chance to reduce the duration of any hostile Mental effect you are suffering, old or new. This is less reliable and thus less powerful than many other duration reductions, but I think it's tactically interesting.
-
Infusion: Predator (was Infusion: Insidious Poison). Maps terrain and grants Infravision. Applies a type of poison to your weapons (melee or ranged, just like Cunning / Poisons would). Grants a +% damage bonus to one specific creature type. This Instant infusion never breaks Stealth.
-
Infusion: Adaptation removes 2 Poison or Disease effects, grants Water Breathing, grants +% resist Fire & Cold, and each turn has a % chance to reduce the duration of any hostile Fire, Cold, Poison or Disease effect. Like the Clarity Rune, this duration reduction is less reliable and thus less powerful than most current effect cures. The water breathing ought to last long enough to do some digging.
Spell Retuning
Technique / Magical Combat
No talent changes, but the stat requirements for this tree can now be met with Dexterity or Strength, whichever is higher. This works the same as how Combat Techniques and Combat Veteran work.
Earth / Stone Skin
Now grants +10% armor hardiness, and also a flat damage reduction which scales from 1 to 20 (at 5/5 and 100 Spellpower), with a maximum of 35. This talent should now be worthwhile to a variety of builds, including Archmagi and Stone Wardens and Arcane Blades alike.
Spell / Temporal:
-
Congeal Time now inflicts global slow and a minor damage over time. The CD is reduced to 4, so it can sub for a tri-beam effect at very low levels (up to ~10 or so), but the damage doesn't scale well, so you'll mainly use it for the speed debuff at high levels.
-
Time Prison now slows movement and projectiles after the freeze duration expires (or if the freeze effect is avoided). This 100-mana spell is now always useful against archers (or for running away).
Spell / Aether and
Spell / Arcane:
- The "trap" created by
Aether Beam now has a Disarm difficulty equal to your Spellpower. If the disarm check fails, the "trap" explodes for some small damage (your Spellpower x 2) in radius 3.
-
Arcane Power now costs 20 mana to sustain, and grants some moderate Arcane damage resist (8% to 27%) based on talent level. The Spellpower buff remains pathetic outside of very low levels, but the Arcane resist ought to make Aether Permeation more interesting, and 20 mana is cheap enough that even the Spellpower buff seems pretty decent.
Chronomancy Tweaks
There's a new option in the Gameplay tab for
Nulltweaks: Chronomancy.
Classic - no changes
TW Willpower - changes only
Speed Control:
- All talents in Speed Control now require Willpower rather than Magic. This gives the Temporal Warden an unambiguous start (Dex + Will), and the Paradox Mage two Willpower trees instead of just the current one tree. The impact is that it makes status-caster TW viable early rather than making you wait to get your few active spells. More spellpower is still important for Speed Control, so Magic points and +spellpower gear are still just as desirable.
Awesome - changes all Temporal Warden trees to use Magic, and some Paradox Mage trees to use Willpower.
Magic:
-
Temporal Combat
-
Spacetime Folding
-
Spacetime Weaving
Willpower:
-
Energy
-
Paradox
Additionally, under
Awesome some talents will be tweaked or replaced:
-
Quantum Feed -> replaced by
Drain Fate, which is an attack talent that increases the target's cooldowns and the duration of negative effects, while reducing the duration of beneficial effects.
-
Static History -> the "stasis" duration, which prevents Chronomancy failures, now scales up with Willpower
Berserker Tweak
Replaces
Blood Frenzy (the 4th talent in Two Handed Maiming) with a sustain that has a 10-50% chance to trigger one of the other three talents in that tree -- Stunning Blow, Sunder Arms, or Sunder Armour -- 1/turn with a successful melee attack. You pay the stamina cost for whatever gets triggered. Those talents are pretty expensive, but Bloodbath and some +Stamina regen gear can handle it.
(This is only relevant to pre-1.2 players.)
Weapon Mastery Tweaks
There's a new option in the Gameplay tab for
Nulltweaks: Mastery.
Classic - no changes
Awesome - changes
Weapons Mastery to be a generic, nearly universal mastery talent, but at 0.8 effectiveness. No requirement but level.
Adds
Agile Mastery - full effectiveness mastery of Knives and Whips; requires Dexterity.
Adds
Greatweapon Mastery - full effectiveness mastery of Axes, Maces, Swords and Tridents; requires Strength. This talent is granted by the Warrior Escort and the prodigy Legacy of the Naloren in place of Exotic Weapons Mastery.
Yeek Starting Area Improvement
- Ritch NPC infravision reduced; Stealth should be more useful now.
- Ritch NPCs gain description strings which hint at their damage types and capabilities.
- Ritch melee damage changed to mostly Physical.
--> Ritch Impalers convert 30% melee to Blight.
--> Chitenous Ritches convert 30% melee damage to Acid.
--> Hive Mother converts 30% melee damage to Fire, and another 30% to Blight.
- Ritch Hive Mother gains a large Lite radius.
Other Monster Improvement
Throw Boulder now has a cooldown of 5 (was 3), and using Throw Boulder puts Throw Boulder on cooldown 1 for all visible allies. So, if you see three Snow Giant Boulder Throwers, expect three turns of boulders rather than eating three boulders at once.
