[1.4.4] Eternal Darkness - A Full Necromancer Rework v2.21

[Razakai]

I was hoping I'd fixed that Black Tentacles issue last release. I'll just hope that people manage to restrain themselves from exploiting it too much then. I'd fix it asap, but unfortunately my ISP has screwed up and for the last week I've been left without any internet connection beyond that of my office, and they'd probably frown on me testing ED rather than code releases.

I'd also be interested to hear any thoughts you have on balance, in particular noticeably under or overpowered spells. I pretty much nerfed everything in the addon a few versions back, but I'm sure there's something horribly broken still there.

[stinkstink]

Noticed two more potential issues:
- Death Vortex extends two tiles out past Necrotic Aura's range
- Blood is Power can be canceled by right-clicking the buff icon due to it being a beneficial effect. Changing it to neutral should fix this if it isn't intended.

Vampirism has been an excellent tree so far - fun to use with good damage, AOE and utility, but an appropriate weakness in enemies with flat debuff immunity like elementals and Nightmare Horrors. My only complaints would be that a lack of minimum shield strength on Crimson Barrier renders it useless early in the game for the low HP races who need shielding the most, and having to wait for Blood is Power to wear off after fights before I can rest. It'd be nice if Blood is Power only drained health if enemies were in view akin to Berserker Rage.

Grave I haven't played with much aside from Gravespike (which is a decent t1 attack) because it looks like the playstyle is a massive mana hog on a class with mana problems, but I may wind up investing in late it if I pick up Eternity's Counter, as it could be a potent combination with a larger resource pool and Yeek racials. Corpselight/Hungering Cold didn't really impress me the way Exsanguinate/Blood is Power did, but I only played with them briefly with low point investment and didn't really use them synergistically, so it's probably an unfair assessment.

[Razakai]

Yeah, changing CB to be a flat spellpower scaling amount + portion of your health does seem like a better deal. And copying the zerker rage effect so you can rest with BiP would be a good quality of life change.
Some mana costs for Grave might be a little too high then. Although yes, compared to other trees it's very synergistic. Corpselight can proc multiple Icy Talons letting you machinegun out Gravespikes, and Hungering Cold has the highest damage of any Necromancer spell outside of Reaper's Mark.

[stinkstink]

Walked on an acid trap and got this

Code: Select all

Lua Error: /hooks/eternaldarkness/load.lua:54: attempt to call method 'isTalentActive' (a nil value)
            At [C]:-1 isTalentActive
            At /hooks/eternaldarkness/load.lua:54
            At [string "return function(l, self, data) local ok=false..."]:1 triggerHook
            At /data-Infinite500/damage_typesI500.lua:453 defaultProjector
            At /data/damage_types.lua:703 projector
            At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:198 project
            At /data/general/traps/elemental.lua:33 triggered
            At /engine/Trap.lua:139 trigger
            At /mod/class/Trap.lua:148 trigger
            At /engine/Trap.lua:153 check
            At [string "return function(self, x, y, what, ...) local ..."]:1 checkAllEntities
            At /engine/Actor.lua:214 move
            At /mod/class/Actor.lua:1306 move
            At /mod/class/Player.lua:296 moveDir
            At /mod/class/Game.lua:1634
            At /engine/KeyBind.lua:229

I've gotten the opportunity to use Frozen Talons a bit now that I have a decent Manasurge and it seems quite strong, especially with River of Souls running. However, the fact that Hungering Cold doesn't freeze enourages me to skip it and use Bitter Gale runes to strip stun resist instead, to keep the Gravespike/Corpselight machine running. The trickiest part of Grave seems to be luck with freeze, I could see a build taking Advanced Necrotic solely for the minions with Cold Flames.

Another nice quality of life change would be to add the nowarning=true parameter to Corpselight's target function so you can plant it under your feet without a confirmation prompt.

Having the curse_gfx effect pop over enemies that get hit with Finger of Death's instakil would be a nice little visual effect.

[donkatsu]

Quality of life improvement: since Surge of Undeath lets you heal you heal your minions to full, it should just passively give them a small amount of life regen so you don't have to cast it out of combat all the time.

This happens with the main branch too, but resurrected bone giants are no longer in your party despite still being friendly, allowing you to have as many bone giants as you want. Unsure if intentional.

Many minion talents are useless because they check saves and the minion has almost no physical power/ spell power. Yes you can pump them with Surge of Undeath, but even then they won't go very high (up to 40's; enemy saves can be 60-90 depending on difficulty). Suspects include vampires, dreads, ghouls, and wights.

I really like the way everything non-minion-related looks! Very interesting choices there with every tree and damage type offering some sort of advantage over the others.

[Razakai]

I'll be back at my main PC at the weekend, so I'll aim for a release then. So, plans:

- Fix the bugs stinkstink bought up with traps, wisps, black tentacles and so on
- Add new EotD effects so each tree has one
- Prevent minions from debuffing you
- Make liches no longer spawn with AM equiop
- Tidy up descriptions to remove typos
- Rebalance minions to give them better spell/phys/mindpower and accuracy, but lower their total damage to compensate. Look at the resolver scaling so advanced minions aren't quite so bad at low levels
- Make BiP only drain health while enemies are visible
- Rework Surge of Undeath a little, seeing as the bonus power will be less useful. Considering making it a frenzy type effect instead.

Giving minions passive health regen makes sense, but I do feel I've started to make them a bit too permanent. The original design in vanilla was to have them as disposable creatures rather than things like thoughtforms/golems. I'll have to consider whether I'll keep the hp regen effect on SoU at all, especially with Animus Hoarder making them much more 'recyclable'.

[stinkstink]

Got another lua loop, reliably triggered it multiple times by casting Exsanguinate into the orc hatred vault, within a few turns errors would start popping up. Clearing the vault without casting Exsanguinate prevented the error.

Code: Select all

    AI took for target      6867    orc archer      ::      14827   Forgery of Haze (i'm a soul man)        49      <       100
    [PROJECTOR] starting dam        78.123839457367
    [PROJECTOR] after difficulty dam        78.123839457367
    [PROJECTOR] res -35.384615384615        1.3538461538462  on dam 85.364277704914
    [PROJECTOR] after resists dam   115.57009904665
    [PROJECTOR] after flat damage armor     115.57009904665
    [PROJECTOR] final dam after static checks       115.57009904665
    [PROJECTOR] final dam after hooks and callbacks 115.57009904665
    [PROJECTOR] starting dam        34
    [PROJECTOR] after difficulty dam        34
    [PROJECTOR] res 18      0.82     on dam 34
    [PROJECTOR] after resists dam   27.88
    [PROJECTOR] after flat damage armor     27.88
    [PROJECTOR] final dam after static checks       27.88
    Lua Error: /hooks/eternaldarkness/load.lua:22: attempt to call method 'getTalentFromId' (a nil value)
            At [C]:-1 getTalentFromId
            At /hooks/eternaldarkness/load.lua:22
            At [string "return function(l, self, data) local ok=false..."]:1 triggerHook
            At /data-Infinite500/damage_typesI500.lua:453 defaultProjector
            At /data/damage_types.lua:662 projector
            At /data/general/grids/lava.lua:34 check
            At /engine/Map.lua:762 checkEntity
            At .../addons/marson-autoexplore/superload/mod/class/Actor.lua:100 act
            At /mod/class/NPC.lua:54 act
            At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:126 tickLevel
            At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:62 tick
            At /engine/GameTurnBased.lua:46 tick
            At /mod/class/Game.lua:1182
     ----------------  Stack Dump ----------------
    --------------- Stack Dump Finished ---------------

[Razakai]

Almost finished with the release, just been trying to figure out how to best add the debuff immunity.
I can't recreate that Exsanguinate bug unfortunately, it's a really weird looking one. I'll ask for some external help from other developers, as something that gamebreaking def needs fixing before release.
Although seeing as nearly everything else is complete, I might just release tonight anyway after testing, I can always do another release later. Might as well get the other fixes rolled out.

[stinkstink]

The crashes always seemed to happen around traps or lava floors. Try adding "if data.src and".. to any hooks that call data.src:getTalentFromId(), I think the crashes are coming from when it tries to reference terrain.

[Razakai]

That would make sense, my tests are usually done in the fortress and the orc hatred vault has lava. Ran into a few more weird bugs so I'm taking some more time fixing those, will also put in the fix for debuff immunity you and Gray provided over in the dev forum.

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/4345

v2.12
- Surge of Undeath applies a frenzy effect rather than healing
- Consume Soul heals your minions
- Essence of the Dead has temporarily had some effects removed pending rework
- Crimson Barrier now has a base shielding value in addition to the percentage value
- Fixed a bug with Exsanguinate when used on certain tiles
- Blood is Power only drains health while an enemy is visible
- Minions should no longer hit the summoner with negative effects
- Minion Mastery summons now have increased spellpower, mindpower and accuracy
- Liches no longer spawn with antimagic equipment
- Fixed a bug with acid traps
- Black Tentacles now correctly obeys line of sight rules
- Death Vortex uses the correct range
- Tidied up descriptions


Didn't manage to get the new EotD effects working unfortunately. Will work on that more later.

[stinkstink]

Bad news is my proposed fix for frozen/exsanguinated targets taking floor damage didn't work. Good news is I have a better one. Instead of using "if data.src", use

Code: Select all

if data.src.__CLASSNAME ~= "mod.class.Grid"

in lines 21, 26, and 31 before calling getTalentFromId(). Brittle Bones seems to have the same problem from the testing I did, this should resolve it as well.

[Razakai]

Yeah, I was in a rush last night and didn't spawn any lava fields to check it myself either. I still need to figure out why the new EotD functions didn't work (you can see my failed attempts in the commented out code) so as part of that I can give your fix a go, thanks.

[Zul]

A few observations with the current version:

• Bone golems have an AOE bleed they like to apply to themselves and allies. (It does no damage but is slightly annoying.)
• Corpselight attacks invisible/stealthed targets. Is this intended?
• Gravespike can be used to find invisible/stealthed targets while targetting! (The first occupied square in line turns red.)
• Gravespike freezes minions.
• Resurrected Bone Golems cease to be minions (they are still friendly, but you can summon a new one).
• Bone Golems like to cast Earthen Missiles on you (doing no damage, but applying the debuff).

I'm not a big fan of the reworked Grave tree, it is very unreliable. It might be a good pick for lategame DPS, but in the early game it sacrifices a lot of survivability compared to the other trees. (Due to high mana costs, lots of cold resistance in the game and unreliable CC.)

[icetongue]

The speed buff granted by Surge of Undeath is bugged and turned all my minions into lightning fast murdermachines.



It also massively reduces their spell cooldowns, causing them to go into the negatives.