Stone alchemy is not useless by any means. Stone touch is extremely useful, imbue gives you an extra 5% all or an extra 10% damage all plus greater crit chance, and the extra wealth gives you another couple of random voratun randart tries. The probability travel is usually better then a phase door or a teleport since you know exactly where you will end up and it is on the other side of a wall which tends to protect you from the big baddie. It saved me many a life in the last run through.
Alchemy is something you need to open the category for to really use though. A .7 in a skill is beyond useless for most of it. You really should have one of the escorts offer it. I did not really notice the last run through since I was playing an alchemist anyway.
[b42] Expanded Escorts
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Re: [b42] Expanded Escorts
I agree. Any category that can heal (celestial), teleport (stone) or remove status effects(conditioning) is at least in theory worth a category point. Whether in practice it's worth the investment I'm less sure. I'd prefer alchemists in, gives the player extra options.
Re: [b42] Expanded Escorts
... doesn't the stone tree teleport require alchemist gems? That can be a bit of a problem for non-alchemists. You can pick up a few alchie gems, but doing so entails killing alchemist enemies. Which you may not encounter, or survive encountering.
Stone alchemy tree itself is alright. First two talents (which are the most useful for a non-alchemist) are raw, so the mastery level is irrelevant -- that's one of the things that makes getting the whole tree as an escort reward so attractive. Stone touch I've never liked, but maybe it's been buffed at some point... few times I've tried it, it tended to not work on things you'd want it to work on (and the things it did work on tended to melt with one or two bombs anyway, so...). Gem portal's nice if you've got the gems for it. It's basically a gimped probability travel, but probability travel is borderline game breaking so that means th'portal's still pretty powerful
Stone alchemy tree itself is alright. First two talents (which are the most useful for a non-alchemist) are raw, so the mastery level is irrelevant -- that's one of the things that makes getting the whole tree as an escort reward so attractive. Stone touch I've never liked, but maybe it's been buffed at some point... few times I've tried it, it tended to not work on things you'd want it to work on (and the things it did work on tended to melt with one or two bombs anyway, so...). Gem portal's nice if you've got the gems for it. It's basically a gimped probability travel, but probability travel is borderline game breaking so that means th'portal's still pretty powerful
Re: [b42] Expanded Escorts
I thought you had a good point, till I noticed my bulwark-alchemist has the talent: create alchemist gems sitting on his toolbar. It must come with the category.Frumple wrote:... doesn't the stone tree teleport require alchemist gems? That can be a bit of a problem for non-alchemists. You can pick up a few alchie gems, but doing so entails killing alchemist enemies. Which you may not encounter, or survive encountering.
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ghostbuster
- Uruivellas
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Re: [b42] Expanded Escorts
I tried the addon and I liked it. Probably unbalanced, but it changes the experience with escorts. I do not think that it should be included in the mainstream tome, but it is really fun playing some games with it.
Anyway some bugs should be fixed:
- for the thief, type reward should be TECHNIQUE/mobility
- for the wyrmic type reward should be WILD-GIFT/slime and WILD-GIFT/fungus
- for the doomed, talent gesture of guarding is useless as the code checks that gestures of pain (that cannot be learned) is active
Anyway some bugs should be fixed:
- for the thief, type reward should be TECHNIQUE/mobility
- for the wyrmic type reward should be WILD-GIFT/slime and WILD-GIFT/fungus
- for the doomed, talent gesture of guarding is useless as the code checks that gestures of pain (that cannot be learned) is active
Re: [b42] Expanded Escorts
So, after playing with this addon for a while, I found that there were still some problems. In particular, quite a few escorts still gave rewards that were primarily only useful with repeated investment or the right stats (Cursed/Corruptors in particular). Temporal Wardens I believe in particular were annoying, since their talents were active but there doesn't actually seem to be a way for a non-Chronomancer to remove paradox, aside from Rune of the Rift.
So I posted a new update trying out an alternate methodology. I'm still including talents of all types, but heavily consolidating escorts, down to six (one for each stat) plus the loremaster. The escort rewards are tied more to a mechanical theme than a talent type theme. It's probably rather less realistic from an in-game standpoint, but I think it should ensure that there's never going to be a feeling of disappointment when an escort arrives. There might be a preference (for my money, the Scout and Healer have the two really stand-out talents), but every escort should have something useful to any character, as well as several side-options that can fit certain builds.
Most of the talents themselves were from the set I had used previously. Some were taken out, and per requests, some Stone Alchemy options were added back in.
Original post has been updated to reflect the changes.
The bugs should also be fixed, although Gesture of Guarding is still in. As I understand it, the code check for Gesture of Pain is only to determine whether it counter-attacks. That's a notable part of the talent, but some melee damage reduction is still sufficiently worth it to include, I think.
So I posted a new update trying out an alternate methodology. I'm still including talents of all types, but heavily consolidating escorts, down to six (one for each stat) plus the loremaster. The escort rewards are tied more to a mechanical theme than a talent type theme. It's probably rather less realistic from an in-game standpoint, but I think it should ensure that there's never going to be a feeling of disappointment when an escort arrives. There might be a preference (for my money, the Scout and Healer have the two really stand-out talents), but every escort should have something useful to any character, as well as several side-options that can fit certain builds.
Most of the talents themselves were from the set I had used previously. Some were taken out, and per requests, some Stone Alchemy options were added back in.
Original post has been updated to reflect the changes.
The bugs should also be fixed, although Gesture of Guarding is still in. As I understand it, the code check for Gesture of Pain is only to determine whether it counter-attacks. That's a notable part of the talent, but some melee damage reduction is still sufficiently worth it to include, I think.