are weapon effects documented somewhere?

[chronomancer]

When I'm looking at my weapons, I'm sometimes baffled at what the special effects do. "Burn arcane resource" probably drains MP etc for example, but "burn latent spell energy?" Is that the same thing? What about "disrupt spell-casting"? Is that a silence? (And I could have sworn I previously saw a weapon that DID say "silence", implying that it's NOT a silence effect?)

The wiki has a great link that shows status effects from talents, but sadly, doesn't seem to document weapon effects other than simply listing them. Does anyone have a link to a post on the net somewhere that documents this stuff? It seems a shame to see all the work that's gone into programming all these weapon effects wasted, simply because there's little motivation to use a weapon with an "unknown" effect in favor of one that is understood.

[SadistSquirrel]

Often the best ways to figure these sorts of things out is to ask, a lot of the time a need for conciseness in the tooltips leaves some of them being a little too confusing. People try, but sometimes 'Burn Arcane Resource' is all you can fit in.

I can answer what they do, although to I don't believe there's much in the way of a weapon effects 'record' anywhere.

1. Burn Arcane Resource will remove a certain amount of Arcane resource. (Mana, Vim, Positive / Negative energy). I believe the actual numbers are 400% Mana, 200% Vim, 100% Positive / Negative energy, but I could be wrong. Example: 10 Burn Arcane Resource is 40 Mana, 20 Vim and 10 Positive / Negative energy. Paradox is also an Arcane Resource, but it isn't affected by this effect.

2. Burn Latent Spell Energy will turn off and place on cooldown your Arcane based Sustains, this -does- affect Paradox, along with Mana, Vim and Pos / Neg energy.

3. Disrupt Spell-casting... I'm not 100% sure on, my gut says that it disrupts -your- casting. But if it's an on-hit effect, I can only assume it occasionally puts enemy Arcane Spells on cooldown.

Anti-Magic items will effectively combine the last two effects on you, removing Arcane sustains periodically, and causing your arcane spells to occasionally be disrupted.

[Noel]

The wiki page on weapon egos is a good place to start: http://te4.org/wiki/Egos-weapons -- although I think it's a bit out of date -- for instance, "thought-forged" weapons now also have a chance to apply a gloom effect.

(An "ego" is a property or set of properties applied to an item)

And yes, the "of disruption" weapon ego disrupts an enemy's spellcasting on hit. I think it's different from a silence effect in that silence lasts for a number of turns, while disruption seems to only take effect for the current turn. Quite useful for melee classes, though.

[chronomancer]

Many thanks for your responses, that helps a lot! I had been searching the ego-weapons page for exact match-ups to the in-game text (ie., "Burn arcane resource"). It never occurred to me that the wiki text was more in-depth descriptions of the same effects, and that I could match up the item (ego) name to get a more in-depth description from the wiki! (Did that wording make any sense?)

After some digging, I see on the "effects" page that disruption is a chance to cancel spellcasting (not a sure thing) and a chance to lose sustains. (But how big a chance? That's an important detail.) Silence seems to be a total ban on casting, but has no effect on sustains.

To complicate things, there are also damage types, which sometimes have also effects. For example, I have an artefact (Nature's Vengeance) that does "+10 silence damage". It's unclear how this is applied, as in my tests it didn't seem to be silencing the targets.

Some weapons are still unclear, for example I have a "plaguebringers orichalcum trident of corruption" that does "damage reduction" effect. The plaguebringers and corruption effects are both also present on the weapon, so I'm thinking this is either a third ego that doesn't show up in the name for space reasons (is that possible? it's a purple item, which I think are limited to two egos?), or simply an effect that didn't make it into the wiki yet? Presumably I'll find more items with that effect eventually however, and will be able to use their descriptors to read their wiki entries.

Reading my OP, it occurs to me that I might have sounded critical, so just to be clear: I think the people working on this game are doing a great job! I've played my share of roguelikes, and this is probably my favorite. The talent trees alone add loads of replay value. There are areas that can be improved on of course, but there's only so much one can reasonably ask of volunteers, and given the massive complexity and frequent updates of this game, I expect documenting it all would be an epic feat. The beauty of open source is that we can all help... now if I can only get my fledgling modding & programming skills off the ground, I might even be able to add some token contribution.

[Danton]

To complicate things, there are also damage types, which sometimes have also effects. For example, I have an artefact (Nature's Vengeance) that does "+10 silence damage". It's unclear how this is applied, as in my tests it didn't seem to be silencing the targets.

That's a 10% chance to silence. They can still (mind?) save against it, I believe, which may account for you not seeing the silence.

Some weapons are still unclear, for example I have a "plaguebringers orichalcum trident of corruption" that does "damage reduction" effect. The plaguebringers and corruption effects are both also present on the weapon, so I'm thinking this is either a third ego that doesn't show up in the name for space reasons (is that possible? it's a purple item, which I think are limited to two egos?), or simply an effect that didn't make it into the wiki yet? Presumably I'll find more items with that effect eventually however, and will be able to use their descriptors to read their wiki entries.

The damage reduction is part of the "of corruption" suffix. Purples are indeed limited to two egos, but they get greater egos, which tend to have more effects than their lesser cousins.

I invite you to do some code diving if you're interested in the specific mechanics. The LUA is quite readable if you have even a small amount of programming experience, and it's all really easy to get to (plain text in well named folders within the .team).