FM's Thoughts & Ramblings

[Final Master]

NEW AS OF OCT 12, 2010 11:50 AM CENTRAL STANDARD TIME

I feel as though I should put a disclaimer here so there is not any confusion by anything said in this thread. Anything I say here is not meant to discourage, hurt, disrupt, bash, or any other negative effect to anyone here, the game, the community or anything at all. This is purely the title, it is my personal thoughts, rants, raves, and ideas about and for the game of TOME 4. I will not address topics here that do not pertain directly to the game, nor will I respond to anything that is also not directed towards the game in this thread. Again, if you have anything you wish to address that is NOT directly about the game, please, PM me about it and I will gladly discuss it with you. Again, thank you for your time.

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This is mostly just a thread for me to share my thoughts and general questions about Tome 4. You may pretty much disregard this, unless you are interested in what goes through my head while playing and thinking about the game. I'll try to bleep out spoilers if I expose any that are not really considered common knowledge yet. If you would like to leave me a comment about anything here, feel free, though I would slightly prefer to keep this topic to myself. PM me instead, I will reply back rather quickly I bet.

NOTE: This will actually probably turn into an essay like string of topics as I may actually use this as part of my english term paper at the end of the year.

Alright, so then, time to dump out what I ... well ... whatever.

First, there are still a lot of random typos but luckily they are being reported rather quickly at http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?uid ... 43&start=0 that thread. But one in particular that has been bugging me forever is the beginning of the merchant quest. The first option says 'then' instead of 'the'. I have fixed it myself, but... it just really really bothered me.

Overall I feel the balance between the character classes that I have currently played, which is all of them now except Reaver and Anathoril is good. Rogues are probably the weakest right now, with wyrmics closely behind, followed by cursed (when not using the bugged/broken ravage tree). HOWEVER, the balance between characters and npcs is rather skewed in some odd ways. Snakes are by far the deadliest things I have ever seen in melee within the first 10 levels. I've taken down large amounts of orcs, thieves, skeletons and even some of the higher spiders, but snakes are almost a guaranteed death to character early in the game. And it's not even really because they poison. Sure that extra 1-50(!?) points of damage helps them, but it's that they are inherently almost twice as fast as most player characters, usually chasing them down from double digit squares and reaching them within just a few steps. Once they are within range, they usually get 2 hits in to your one, with each having a chance to poison you. I don't know of any other super fast npcs like snakes, but they are by far the worst thing to run into.

This leads me into the exp system. It seems rather the same as any other rogue-like, however it doesn't display how much exp you can expect from a kill. This is fine as I always thought it was a bit too spoilery for me. HOWEVER, the fact that an ant at level 8 when I'm at level 1 is worth almost 60% exp compared to a winter wolf or a stone troll at maybe 22% is utter stupidity. Ants are base speed, weaker than trolls in both damage output and hp. Sure, some have a shield, but I'm talking your basic brown ant. Ant pits are exactly what I want to find at anytime I'm needing a level, because they offer such an en-proportionate amount of xp for the threat level they present. Also, and this one bugs the hell out of me, the level cut off for gaining exp is 5 levels below you. FIVE levels. You know how often you fight something that is 5 levels or lower than you once you're at about level 18? I've found that it's almost 20% of your fights are with things that low. The higher in level you get, say... level 30, the worse it is. The twenty or so times I've had character reach around level 30, almost 40% of all kills rewarded no exp at all. And then the amount of exp you get from a kill seems rather skewered. Do you gain a greater exp reward by level multiplier or by level difference? For example, killing that level 8 brown ant with a level 1 character will probably nab you about 60%. Once you get going and are level 20, killing that OOD 38 level spider in the vault will only get you maybe 10% at best. Why did the ant reward so much more? Because it was 8x my level? If so... I kind of want it changed. It makes leveling so much faster in the beginning and drop to almost a nagging crawl late game (levels 35+). If it were instead based on the difference in level, then leveling would be more uniform throughout all levels.


This is about artifacts, read at your own discretion
Artifacts. You can have an artifact in almost every body slot now! Which is awesome, but there are some very neglected slots so far. Such as there not being any axe or 1handed mace artifacts yet. No artifact diggers and I also believe no artifact ammos. There are multiple artifact rings, lites, staves, swords, and amulets, but most every other slot is neglected to a single artifact. I really think that there should have been many many more by now, especially sense there is a whole thread dedicated to the conception of them along with egos here http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=22187. And then the egos. So many items have only 1 prefix and/or 1 suffix. With so many good ego ideas in the above thread, I don't understand why so few egos are added each beta. I understand a lot of the betas are really just bug fixes right now, as they have been, along with a cool new requested or surprise feature, but I really feel items are being neglected big time. Now, sure, alot of the artifacts and egos are really cool, but so many of them are also rather trashy. Bills Treetrunk is actually rather worthless I feel outside of getting any egoed steel twohander or non egoed dwarven-steel item. I just don't feel the power there. Where as OMW Barkwood is almost insane in comparison for anyone that uses shields. And I can't think of any reason to ever not wear the icy slippers of the Carn Dum Dragon, as they are far superior IMO over the other pair of artifact shoes. Melee characters, mages, wyrmics, and even shadowblades I feel are slightly forced into mastering in swords (cryomancers for the mages), because the only end game weapon artifact for short range characters is Ringil. It's the only really awesome weapon artifact outside of the artifact bow (the sling too, sorta), and suaruman's completed staff. It adds resistance to an important damage type, increases it's own damage output, is easy to wear, deals serious damage on it's own, and can do a free freeze. There is not a single artifact in the game I feel that has that kind of power, outside of saurman's staff, the (I think) Fiery Brooch of the fire elemental boss, and maybe, MAYBE Smaug's Shield. Seeing as there is no other melee weapon that is worth it's salt on it's own as that is, even my super dwarf themed dwarf fighters have started to master into swords instead of axes for the sake of survivability in the depths of the far east.

And now talents. I really really wish that they would be properly displaying information. I've said this a lot to those of you that may keep track of my posts, but almost every melee talent description negates to mention that it scales with dexterity, and then many more talents also fail to say that they scale at all. I say give all that relevant information in the talent descriptions. HAVE THE GOD DAMN talent trees show EXACTLY the damage ratio you can expect from all the boosts. I hate the fact that the G talent tree description effects are different than the m ones, and THEN the actual game effects of what happens are different than them even at times. I know it's not a matter of copy and paste the code, I've looked through it. It's actually rather complicated, especially sense I don't know how a lot of the math is configured. But my god, some of these have been around sense beta 5 if not earlier. I know they have been brought out in active, building threads because I've read them. I'm not saying laziness or bashing of anyone, it's just so freaking annoying that something that I think would be a rather simple fix (but I can't seem to make it work properly myself) would be bypassed for so many months. Also, if the talent runs off of raw talent level (which I'll get into shortly), it should say so. There are so many talents that are mastery 1.3 that raw talent level makes them much much much weaker than they otherwise would be. A very good example is a fighter with the passive combat techniques tree. He has 1.30 mastery in it, but it doesn't matter. So 1) Why have the mastery of whole talent trees that run off of raw talent level greater than 0.7 (which I think is the lowest mastery in the game), and 2) What's the point of raw talent level talents? Why have them that way? I understand it for ease of number application and even a bit on balance, but it seems like an unnecessary differentiation between talents, especially sense they are not said as such in the descriptions.

I also feel that instead of giving so many damned talent trees to so many classes, we need to start to take some away. I'm all for character build options. That's why I love archmages and shadowblades. But how many freaking trees does a fighter need? What about archmages? Do they really need so many options? Why not take the temporal, meta, and survival away, sense in the class descriptions it SAYS that they don't really know anything about those two schools. I know doing that would just let the class catagory talent points go into mastery ups, but then it would LIMIT their options so that not every build has either invisibility/telepathy and essence of speed running all the time.

And the talent masteries! My GOD. I was told by a couple different people that it's to show the variable power between similar but different classes. Alright, I understand that. It's a cool hunk of flavor and a good representation of power and balance. But then... if Archmages are the base mage, why in the hell are all of their spell masteries at 1.3 instead of the 1.0 like the cursed? Have archmages be at 1.0 mastery for all spell talents except arcane, then have pyromancers at 1.3 for fire and 1.4 for wildfire, with tempests, cryomancers and gaiamancersfollowing suit. I would then suspect that the upcoming chronomancers would then have 1.3 masteries in meta, temporal and their specialist trees as well. That way it would really represent how specialists work in the game. And because of that, I just have to go back and say, "HEY! Why not get rid of all that rawttalent level crap? Because then, the mastery bit doesn't matter."

There are many threads that really interest me. Such as the balance discussion thread http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?uid ... 06&start=0 , the online profile stats http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=22470 , the unlockables thread http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=21547 , and the artifact and ego ideas topic http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=22187 . All of them contain interesting discussions, information, and are a good look through if you're interested in any of those particular topics. The nice new things thread http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=22742 is a good place to place your thanks to the development team, and if you are relatively new to T4, a good place to get broad ideas of how the game was in it's early incarnations. Before starting threads (I am guilty of this), be sure to check the dumb questions thread http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=21525 and see if your question is answered there. If not, then a quick sweep of the bugs sub forum http://forums.te4.org/viewforum.php?f=42 would be a good second place to look. Helping myself, DG and the development team by partaking in this opinionated survey (it should take only about 7 minutes of your time) http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=22776 would greatly help in the developmental processes, along with my obsession of what not to do and what to do when developing games.

I think I'm done for now. I'll come back later for more. Thanks to anyone that reads this, and remember, if you have anything to say about what I post in this topic, please, PM me and we'll talk.

FM

[edge2054]

And the talent masteries! My GOD. I was told by a couple different people that it's to show the variable power between similar but different classes. Alright, I understand that. It's a cool hunk of flavor and a good representation of power and balance. But then... if Archmages are the base mage, why in the hell are all of their spell masteries at 1.3 instead of the 1.0 like the cursed? Have archmages be at 1.0 mastery for all spell talents except arcane, then have pyromancers at 1.3 for fire and 1.4 for wildfire, with tempests, cryomancers and gaiamancersfollowing suit. I would then suspect that the upcoming chronomancers would then have 1.3 masteries in meta, temporal and their specialist trees as well. That way it would really represent how specialists work in the game. And because of that, I just have to go back and say, "HEY! Why not get rid of all that rawttalent level crap? Because then, the mastery bit doesn't matter."

I used to feel the same way about masteries when I first started spouting out class ideas. Now that I'm sitting down and coding chronomancers (which is actually three classes) I've found it a handy way to differentiate between mastery over different trees.

As an example, Temporal Blades will have access to several trees that will overlap with Paradox Mages and Infinite Travelers. Some of these trees they will know at 1.3 mastery and some of them they'll know at 1.0 mastery.

As to raw talent level is some spots it can't be avoided. Say you have a talent you want to scale from 20-80% but never hit 100%? Do you figure that talent as though the player can have a talent mastery of 1.3? 1.4? 2? If you envision the talent as being 80% at five talent points do you let someone push it higher by having a higher mastery?

How about the talent Avoid Fate I just worked on? If that talent gets pushed up to 100% the player can't die. Using raw talent levels lets me ensure that never happens. I know it feels unfair but sometimes it's just easier (a whole lot easier) to use raw talent levels.

FYI: Chronomancers won't have a mana pool and therefore won't have access to any of the spell trees currently in the game.

Also I did avoid using rawtalent level for Avoid Fate but I imagine if someone (Shoob) does figure out how to push it up to 100% I'll have to rebalance it using rawtalent (rather then having to fix it every time something gets introduced that raises talent masteries.)

[Shoob]

Also I did avoid using rawtalent level for Avoid Fate but I imagine if someone (Shoob) does figure out how to push it up to 100% I'll have to rebalance it using rawtalent (rather then having to fix it every time something gets introduced that raises talent masteries.)

/me feels special

hmmm, I have ideas how to, but I cant say anything yet as I haven't tried it...

the other way you could handle it is to put a cap on it with math.max

[darkgod]

Yeah but using max() is worse than getTalentLevelRaw IMO because it means a talent point will be totaly useless (kinda like a 5th point in Phase Door for archamges, only worse)

[Repton]

Yeah but using max() is worse than getTalentLevelRaw IMO because it means a talent point will be totaly useless (kinda like a 5th point in Phase Door for archamges, only worse)

So will you be uncapping Riposte?

(a warrior that invests in dex can max riposte with only 2 levels..)

[Mithril]

Agree especially on talents desperately needing more accurate and full descriptions. If you have looked at the source code how about creating a special thread for more accurate talent descriptions where suggestions can be posted?

[darkgod]

Make a thread in the development section

[Taxorgian]

One of the issues with artifact design is that the game is being developed -- although it's near completion now -- at the same time as the artifacts are proposed. So, aside from the Ugly Stick from the forest which has been worthless since beta6 at least, aside from an OK starter weapon for an alchemist golem, people who come up with artifact ideas cannot know what to prepare for. Some artifacts need to be rebalanced to being more powerful. When I proposed The Ring of the War Master, it's stats were amazingly powerful as was The Water Silmaril. Now... not so much.

[Kemsha]

I think that another problem with Ringil is that it is a guaranteed artifact. If we specialize in swords we know for sure where we can get the BEST weapon available.

I think that's nice to have a good reward for a hard fight but the guy wielding a greatsword should have a chance at one too.

But if we have lots of artifacts, the odds that the Ultra-greatsword pops up just for the right character are probably very slim.

Maybe there should be other ways to get guaranteed artifacts (wishing, choosing them as a quest reward)


Edit: Forgot to say that I REALLY hate snakes too, they kill more than anything else

[Fela]

I think that's nice to have a good reward for a hard fight but the guy wielding a greatsword should have a chance at one too.

That's actually a valid option now, but it's very hard to get .

[Fela]

When I proposed The Ring of the War Master, it's stats were amazingly powerful as was The Water Silmaril. Now... not so much.

Actually with my shadow blade i find the first item still very useful due to the sheer amount of skills it affects.

If the silmaril didn't have such an enormous negative modifier it might still be useful, right now it isn't. Not quite sure if the negative modifier makes too much sense anyway, else Earendil should also have problems. As far as i understand the curse was on Feanor and his offspring and not on the stones (thus the handburning and sea flinging).

[Final Master]

It has been suggested that I could come up with better and more informative talent descriptions. I suppose I can, and thus, will attempt to. If they will be in this post or one a bit further down, I don't know. Though I suppose I should actually post my ideas in a new thread in the development forum as DG has said...

First though, I actually finally noticed something in the item charts I did on the tome wiki (found here http://doku.t-o-m-e.net/tome4:items ). It seems as though the first two robe/cloth armor items do nothing at all. As in, nothing but 2 encumbrance. Sure they can be ego tagged with a small variety of effects but... Why have 5 when only 3 matter? I'm sure it's for symmetry with the leather, heavy and massive body armors... and there clearly should be the hierarchy of massive>heavy>leather>cloth but not a single point in def or anything? A linen wizard hat offers 1 def, and I imagine it as the old Micky Mouse starred hat. How the hell would that offer any defense more than a full on robe? Why not just go the route of 3 like with the boots, gloves, headwear categories if it's going to be (almost pointless) to have the first two material levels of robes do nothing? Again, I stress that anyone interested in adding information to the wiki, please do so. It's filling up a bit, but it is rather slow. If you are uninterested in having to do the coding, just send me what you would like to add via PM, and I'll code it and put it up for you. Thank you.

Along with the various items, there are also tridents. Now I know that there is one from a boss in a certain dungeon, however there are material levels for these as well. I suspect that they will become semi-commonplace in the next beta or so? And also, I believe it was proposed and will be added next beta for the various body armors to actually vary in encumbrance values. With that the case, why not the same with all the swords and axes. All swords and axes currently are at 3 encumbrance. Surely a handaxe doesn't make you all unbalanced as much as a massive greatsword or battle axe? Greatmauls and maces are already relatively different, why not the same with hand axes vs battle axes and longswords vs great swords? Possibly something like handaxe 3, longsword 4, great sword 5, battle axe 6? And with that, I would suggest a different tree of str requirement for the two handed weapons. If you have to use both hands for it to be effective, that inherently requires more strength. Why not bump the required str score up 3 or so points at each level? It won't really bother those that would use them as they're most likely maxing strength each level up anyway and it would add a bit more realistic flair.

Why can we make rings but not amulets? If making amulets is not planned, can we void the generation of blank amulets then? It's just more trash that is really not useful in any sense except possibly alchemists if they can break them down into gems as they can most weapons and armors. But now with the gem stores, that negates that as a need. If we can't enchant them, please, lets remove them.

It seems that there may not be a limit on how much lite you can generate from your lite sources. Radius that is. If so, why not add a new gem that increases lite by 3 to follow suite with the citrine gem. And along with that, I know that there are a varied number of sources that grant (usually small) additions to see invisible, but it seems like I never SEE them anymore. In beta 9 with SI 12 or so, I could see just about anything that was invisible except for one very special exception (DAMN THAT THING!!!!! Wait... never mind.). However in beta12 with see invisible 10 I can't see anything that is invisible unless casting sense. Is it just bad luck in the checks? Did invisibility get buffed?

Now this brings up an interesting bit of questions that I have. With the new tool tips added for the character sheet it gives a very generic and vague list of what the saves do, but not how things like telepathy, invisibility, stealth, and levitation is checked. So I ask, how does the game factor if I see something that is stealthy or invisible? I assume that telepathy is against a check as well and I would assume it to be against the mental save, but what other factors are in that? I've tried to check it in game but I can't seem to get consistent results.

1) What factors are included with see invisible vs invisibility? Does having multiple instances of see invisible stack? If so, is it only the largest equipment value + see invisible potion value?

2) The same for infravision. Do any races or classes other than the one anathroil hymn have access to it yet? If so, how is it factored as well, as I obviously haven't noticed it.

3) I know that npc thieves drop in and out of stealth rapidly and actually kind of oddly. Is it a bug with the surrounding target feature when something is next to me and stealthy (not visible) that I can 'see' it because of the targeting square, or are they simply not stealthy right now and their p isn't returned yet?

4) What determines if I noticed or am noticed when stealthy? It seems still that player stealth is much weaker than npc stealth (or that may be just that I haven't found external sources of extra stealth when I've tried stealth rogues). Would an invisible stealthy rogue, when noticed with by stealth, still be 'invisible' to the npc? If so, why? With invisibility on, do rogue/shadowblades get the stealth attack benefits if they are not actually stealthed?

5) What effects do the three saves actually check against?

5a) Physical save:
Stun, Freeze, Knock back, Bleeding, Poison, Disease, Pin, Web

5b) Spell save:
Burning, Freeze, Frozen Foot, Blind

5c) Mental save:
Confuse, Silent

If it's divided as that (which KIND of makes sense to me but clearly has problems) or similarly, then... why not make it more obvious? I know the tool tips are summaries and not meant to spoil, but it would be useful to know so that we can judge if some talents/abilities are worth investing more than 1 point into.

Oh, and, Shatter doesn't seem to work. All it does it 'destroy' frozen critters without damage. It reveals the 'don't underestimate me by size' achievement even though damage isn't done. The talent says it does a numbered value of damage to frozen targets, but I haven't ever done damage with it. It apparently ignores everything greater than critter rank.

Something else too. Why does cold have inheritable freeze ability? All cold damage from any source has this ability. Fire doesn't function via having the ability to burn, nor nature to poison or slow as far as I'm aware. The only other instance of not mentioned status effect from a damage type was one time casting lightning and it dazed the target. Either let the four/all damage types have the possibility of an external effect, or take away the freeze effect of cold damage.

Suggestions:
Fire - Burning for 5% of damage initially dealt
Nature - Poison for 8% of damage initially dealt
Blight - Disease for 10% of damage initially dealt
Lightning - Daze at a greater chance. Possibly 1% chance for each 10 points of damage dealt
Light - Confusion chance based on 2% per 15 points of damage dealt
Arcane - None, it's pure magic with no extra effect
Darkness - Forget mapping for x radius around effected target where x is based on the % of damage dealt. Possibly 3% for each 10 points of damage dealt
Physical - Knock back effect where it is 1 square for each 50 points of damage dealt at 2% for each 50 damage
Acid - Blindness chance based on 2% of each 10 points of damage

I think that's all damage types.

Stores. There was a good conversation and series of suggestions for stores in a thread but I can't seem to find that particular thread right now. So far we have the basics: Weapons, Armor, Potions, Scrolls, along with a jeweler, staff/wand antique shop, an ego store. There's been a lot of talk about opening up a new style black market so I'm not going to bring that up here now. However there's no general store. No place to purchase up the very basic stuff like diggers, low level non ego ammo (though I guess that one isn't really needed anymore with ammo creation), or a place to gather little rumor tidbits. I along with a lot of other people absolutely loved the crap that the tavern master would tell you. Such as 'hang out on dungeon level 45 if you are wanting those boots of speed+30'. I'm sure there are a lot of hilarious stuff like that along with actual lore and advice that can be added to a 'rumor mill' location. Also, there aren't any non-random side quests currently. We have the proper locations available in the towns but no activations yet. I'm sure there are ideas but it would be great to get some.

Masteries Revisited:
I understand the need for caps on talents. Reposte being the most obvious example. It would be almost insane to get 100% counterattack rates. However putting an artificial cap based entirely on dumping 4/5 levels of points into a talent to really make it good instead of allowing it to grow and letting the player spread the precious points to other talents as well. However, some of the other talents (I'm looking at you again passive combat techniques tree) that are really rather shit purely because they are effected by absolutely nothing other than putting points into it. They don't scale with stats, which I think all of the talents in that tree should be based on con and scale with con. If they were changed to work that way, then they would be decent talents, as they are now however... really only worthwhile to get shield spell and the last one. If they don't scale with a stat, then they should not be limited to raw talent levels. With only 1 point of regeneration at level 5 (that's five levels of CLASS points here), it's rather some steaming crap isn't it? Even dumping 2 class category points (1.50) and possibly though highly improbable getting something like an amulet of mastery with 2.25 additional is 3.75 mastery. At level 5 thats 18.75 effective talent. That's a lot... wow. Okay... Uhm... heh... 18 stamina and life a turn for free... how awesome... Anyway, in that case, I would HIGHLY recommend that they in particular be changed to scale with a stat; preferably constitution, to make them not so terrible. At (what's the highest non bonus stat 60?) con 80 I can see stamina and hp regeneration being at about 20 a turn (a lot as well, but if you are that dedicated to your health I say you should damn well be rewarded) with shield spell probably ending at around 30 (lower the initial values to probably 2 instead of 4). As for the 4th talent... It actually seems fine as is.

And I still stand by what I said about lowering masteries across the board for spell casters. They along with rogues are the most similar in class options/design, so really differentiate them. I really don't think it would make them all that much weaker (which is good for the spell casters), so I don't see any problem with it.

Artifact Integration Revisited:
As I believe I pointed out in my first post, I understand that the ideas and betas are being developed at separate paces and that they need to be coded properly and tested for fairness and what not. I must point out that I don't expect something like 6 new artifacts every beta. I remember very early on (say beta 3) that the only artifacts that I can remember that you could actually get were the staff, shield, maul, helmet, heart, and a particular and classic lite source. And granted, that's all you needed because almost no one was surviving the master at that point. However, 9 betas later there are less than 30 (if I counted right in my haze last night). It just is a rather disappointing amount of artifacts compared to the number of valid and good ideas brought up, and the amount of time that has passed. The same with the case of egos. There are so few still, granted there are a hell of a lot more now than there was in about beta 6. But the large influx of egos I absolutely have to attribute to the new inclusion of cloaks, belts, diggers and gloves. Not even 2 betas ago did we have any of those. So obviously four new item types bring egos with them. And its the PACE that egos are released. It took what... 11 betas before boots (which were available from beta2 if I remember right) to get any egos at all. Hell, I remember when weapons only had prefixes... It's again, just greatly disappointing that with all the valid and sometimes great ideas that they are added in such small amounts and in such slow paces in comparison to new interfaces, graphics, and other features.

Side note: I feel honored and awesome that a couple of my ideas have been directly included; and at the next beta at that!

And once again, tune in soon to see my thoughts in post III!

Topics that will be addressed:
Speed!
New talent descriptions!
Unlocks!
Cheese! (Molds will win, eventually)
and MOAR...

[edge2054]

I just started a thread for that FM with Tidal Wave as the first contender. Please anyone that wishes to make the talent descriptions more informative help out by contributing to that thread.

Oh and COLD doesn't have inherent stun properties. There's actually two damage types, ICE and COLD. ICE has a chance to Freeze.

Also I have to get on board with the make the passive combat techniques generic crowd. Plus Spell Shield I think could use some (low) passive elemental resistances added on to it (maybe these could scale with con?)

[Grey]

I don't get the hate for snakes. They have an odd twisty movement pattern, but once you get used to it then it's easy to dance around them till you get the first hit. And if that hit is a stun then there's really no danger at all. I don't think I've ever died to a snake.

[Mithril]

Generally I think you make many valid suggestions but there are too many of them in a single thread that is also in the wrong forum. Please consider creating a separate thread for each idea or development in the appropriate forum.