Just some suggestions to balance out a few of the weaker abilities:
1. Movement infusions should last much longer
2. Sun infusions should have a higher range
3. Speed runes should have instant usage time
4. Shield runes should be more common
5. Magic attack runes should be removed entirely or provide unique abilities - currently they're worthless as they do little damage, have hideously short range and take way too long to cool down
In general the minimum power of many needs to be increased, so that what you're finding at least beats the quality you start with. Quality needs to scale a little better as you level up too - I still find 60 Life Regen infusions in Dreadfell.
Rune/Infusion tweaks
Moderator: Moderator
Re: Rune/Infusion tweaks
Or more powerful spells, not just more damaging weak spells. Vargh Redemption gives a tidal wave, on top of being a pretty solid ring for most classes. A summoning rune might be pretty cool, actually.
Re: Rune/Infusion tweaks
Talking on IRC with Zonk has produced some further ideas...
Firstly, it should maybe be possible to swap runes/infusions in and out instead of replacing them. This would make situational infusions like movement more viable. It would also stop the temporary ones feeling like a waste. Since they start off on cooldown it's not like you could do it mid-battle with any ease. Would have to also make it that you switching out a rune/infusion that's on cooldown would cause that rune to be destroyed, to stop potential abuses.
Zonk also suggested that the Sun infusion be changed to increase light radius significantly for x turns, whilst also giving +light damage on hit and +light damage %. This would prevent it being a fairly worthless effect that is easily replaced by the Summertide Phial. If players still want some general form of lighting then there should be wands of light, but I can't see them being used much myself.
Zonk also suggested changing the magic attack runes to something which gives bonuses on hit and +damage %. Here's a few of ideas based on that:
Salamander Infusion
Turn one's flesh to flames for 5 turns, giving +8% fire damage, +8% fire resistance, 6 fire damage on hit, and 10 fire damage when hit in melee. Also causes -20% cold resistance for the duration.
Acid Cloud Rune
Become wreathed in a cloud of acid for 5 turns, giving +12% acid damage, 10 acid damage on hit, and causing all foes in melee range to suffer 8 acid damage from the cloud.
Shockskin Rune
Electrify one's skin for 5 turns, giving +10% lightning damage and causing bolts of lightning to zap through foes and beyond when hit in melee, hitting enemies for 40-80 damage. Only one bolt can be triggered per round.
Numbers given are just suggested base amounts. Should probably scale much higher to be viable in the late game.
Firstly, it should maybe be possible to swap runes/infusions in and out instead of replacing them. This would make situational infusions like movement more viable. It would also stop the temporary ones feeling like a waste. Since they start off on cooldown it's not like you could do it mid-battle with any ease. Would have to also make it that you switching out a rune/infusion that's on cooldown would cause that rune to be destroyed, to stop potential abuses.
Zonk also suggested that the Sun infusion be changed to increase light radius significantly for x turns, whilst also giving +light damage on hit and +light damage %. This would prevent it being a fairly worthless effect that is easily replaced by the Summertide Phial. If players still want some general form of lighting then there should be wands of light, but I can't see them being used much myself.
Zonk also suggested changing the magic attack runes to something which gives bonuses on hit and +damage %. Here's a few of ideas based on that:
Salamander Infusion
Turn one's flesh to flames for 5 turns, giving +8% fire damage, +8% fire resistance, 6 fire damage on hit, and 10 fire damage when hit in melee. Also causes -20% cold resistance for the duration.
Acid Cloud Rune
Become wreathed in a cloud of acid for 5 turns, giving +12% acid damage, 10 acid damage on hit, and causing all foes in melee range to suffer 8 acid damage from the cloud.
Shockskin Rune
Electrify one's skin for 5 turns, giving +10% lightning damage and causing bolts of lightning to zap through foes and beyond when hit in melee, hitting enemies for 40-80 damage. Only one bolt can be triggered per round.
Numbers given are just suggested base amounts. Should probably scale much higher to be viable in the late game.
Last edited by Grey on Wed Jan 05, 2011 12:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Rune/Infusion tweaks
Some more thought driven from IRC convos - the stat bonus infusions are bad. They don't last long enough and overall they're very boring, since you rarely see the direct effects of higher stats. Some thoughts on potential replacements which have a bit more flavour:
Bear Infusion
For 5 turns it gives +6 Strength, +4 Constitution, and +15% physical damage resistance.
Condor Infusion
For 5 turns it gives +5 Dexterity, allows you to ignore traps and increases ranged defense by 18.
Shark Infusion
For 5 turns it gives water breathing, +5 Cunning, +6% crits and -20% movement speed in water.
And a very rare artifact infusion:
Phoenix Infusion
For 5 turns it gives +4 Dexterity, +4 Magic, +20% fire resistance, and revival on death. Reviving through it causes it to destroy and burst out a powerful fireball.
Bear Infusion
For 5 turns it gives +6 Strength, +4 Constitution, and +15% physical damage resistance.
Condor Infusion
For 5 turns it gives +5 Dexterity, allows you to ignore traps and increases ranged defense by 18.
Shark Infusion
For 5 turns it gives water breathing, +5 Cunning, +6% crits and -20% movement speed in water.
And a very rare artifact infusion:
Phoenix Infusion
For 5 turns it gives +4 Dexterity, +4 Magic, +20% fire resistance, and revival on death. Reviving through it causes it to destroy and burst out a powerful fireball.
Last edited by Grey on Wed Jan 05, 2011 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Rune/Infusion tweaks
One thing that would help Wild infusions a lot is if tooltips on hostile effects displayed what category they were, because it's not always obvious. It's happened to me multiple times that I activated the infusion thinking that it would remove a hostile effect and nothing happened.
Re: Rune/Infusion tweaks
Because I'm just that lazy.
[12:49] <edge2054> Got an idea for some new runes from this talent I just coded.
[12:50] <edge2054> Resource Boosts - Gives X resource for a few turns but at the end you lose that amount.
[12:50] <edge2054> So a hit point boost might give you 200 hit points for 6 turns but when the effect wears off you lose 200 hit points.
[12:50] <edge2054> Would be instant use.
Re: Rune/Infusion tweaks
My personal reactions, for what they're worth.
- Movement: I've never felt inclined to use one, and have no comment.
- Sun: They always seemed too weak to me. My rune/infusion slots are worth more than just illumination duty. As such, I have no trouble with the idea of powering them up a bit. I don't know that "higher range" would help the fundamental issue, but I certainly don't have a problem with it. The effects on light damage certainly seem reasonable - perhaps matched later on by a Night infusion that would suck the light out of an area, give +darkness damage and +% darkness damage, render the character temporarily invisible, and turn off the character's light source for the (relatively short) duration.
- Speed: This. Absolutely this. Most speed runes don't even produce time. Between the low turn count and the low speed boost, but the time the speed rune runs out, you haven't even made up the action you used to activate it - and I'm supposed to spend an infusion slot on this thing?
- Shield: No comment either way.
- Magic attack: from what I've seen of the magic attack runes, this seems more or less accurate. Having a few magic attack runes that took zero time might be cool, and they could afford to be reasonably weak. If they gave something like stun, freeze, or other interesting crowd control, that could be worthwhile. Moderate damage isn't going to cut it, though. Rune slots are worth too much.
- Quality scaling: The scaling does seem a bit off to me, but I can't quite pin down how, and I'm not sure this is it. Honestly, it's more that I'd like to be able to, for example, have a slot with a regen rune and a slot with a wild rune at the beginning of the game, and then hit multiple points where there were clear upgrades along the way.
- Rune swapping: No. Absolutely not. The point of runes and infusions rather than potions and scrolls was to make it a strategic choice rather than a "fill your backpack" one. I'd be much more inclined to suggest a series of charms or something - magical items that would produce some interesting (and situational) effect by draining an equipped rune (though not an infusion - these are explicitly magical things). The effect kicks off, and the rune goes on cooldown for a duration determined by the charm in question. Overly specific runes could then be made into charms. Alternately, and preferable, would be to replace the existing situational runes/infusions with ones that would have general overall utility, but would *also* have some particular situational benefit. For example, if movement infusions carried a bit of a move speed boost with them (or even an overall speed boost) they'd be a lot more palatable. It's rather like the wild infusion thing. They're *really* handy to have if you need to shrug off some unpleasant negative effect that's killing you, but even without that, it's not like +10% resist all is a *bad* thing. Of course, that just means that I agree with a bunch of the other stuff that Grey has been saying, at least as a general thing.
Another one:
- Rune of Focused Magery: for 5 turns it gives +5 magic, and +4 willpower. It also reduces cooldown time on all magic-based skills by 5.
Having hostile effects display category: yes. Yes, that would be handy. It also seems like they only remove one effect at a time. If this is the case, it might be nice to be able to pick which one.
- Movement: I've never felt inclined to use one, and have no comment.
- Sun: They always seemed too weak to me. My rune/infusion slots are worth more than just illumination duty. As such, I have no trouble with the idea of powering them up a bit. I don't know that "higher range" would help the fundamental issue, but I certainly don't have a problem with it. The effects on light damage certainly seem reasonable - perhaps matched later on by a Night infusion that would suck the light out of an area, give +darkness damage and +% darkness damage, render the character temporarily invisible, and turn off the character's light source for the (relatively short) duration.
- Speed: This. Absolutely this. Most speed runes don't even produce time. Between the low turn count and the low speed boost, but the time the speed rune runs out, you haven't even made up the action you used to activate it - and I'm supposed to spend an infusion slot on this thing?
- Shield: No comment either way.
- Magic attack: from what I've seen of the magic attack runes, this seems more or less accurate. Having a few magic attack runes that took zero time might be cool, and they could afford to be reasonably weak. If they gave something like stun, freeze, or other interesting crowd control, that could be worthwhile. Moderate damage isn't going to cut it, though. Rune slots are worth too much.
- Quality scaling: The scaling does seem a bit off to me, but I can't quite pin down how, and I'm not sure this is it. Honestly, it's more that I'd like to be able to, for example, have a slot with a regen rune and a slot with a wild rune at the beginning of the game, and then hit multiple points where there were clear upgrades along the way.
- Rune swapping: No. Absolutely not. The point of runes and infusions rather than potions and scrolls was to make it a strategic choice rather than a "fill your backpack" one. I'd be much more inclined to suggest a series of charms or something - magical items that would produce some interesting (and situational) effect by draining an equipped rune (though not an infusion - these are explicitly magical things). The effect kicks off, and the rune goes on cooldown for a duration determined by the charm in question. Overly specific runes could then be made into charms. Alternately, and preferable, would be to replace the existing situational runes/infusions with ones that would have general overall utility, but would *also* have some particular situational benefit. For example, if movement infusions carried a bit of a move speed boost with them (or even an overall speed boost) they'd be a lot more palatable. It's rather like the wild infusion thing. They're *really* handy to have if you need to shrug off some unpleasant negative effect that's killing you, but even without that, it's not like +10% resist all is a *bad* thing. Of course, that just means that I agree with a bunch of the other stuff that Grey has been saying, at least as a general thing.
Another one:
- Rune of Focused Magery: for 5 turns it gives +5 magic, and +4 willpower. It also reduces cooldown time on all magic-based skills by 5.
Having hostile effects display category: yes. Yes, that would be handy. It also seems like they only remove one effect at a time. If this is the case, it might be nice to be able to pick which one.