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

[DAllan7m]

Update: I can't replicate that LUA error loop you had DAllan. I hit a mob with Black Ice/Vortex, got them turned off by a Dreadmaster's disperse magic, hit the mob with Hungering Cold, left the level and returned. What version of the addon are you running? I'll also ask in IRC about this specific error message, but I'm hoping you might just have an out of date addon.

Last one. Or else i was unable to use Hungering Cold I'm not sure, but when i leave him, there was some cold flames on the ground, and i dont remember that i detonate something (wasn't able to do it without hitting myself), so may be it was his flames? And this vampire had no spellcraft, it's for sure

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/3863

v1.4 released. Not as major as I hope, so mostly bug fixes and balancing. Plan on releasing the major update when ToME 1.20 is released.
- Undead Explosion cooldown increased to 12 turns, Bone Shield duration reduced, and additional effects added for each minion
- Assemble now converts 5 souls directly into a Bone Giant rather than combining minions
- Shadow Tunnel's range and cooldown scales with talent level, and only provides the darkness damage at level 6
- Additional effects added to Essence of the Dead
- Liches now work correctly with Dark Empathy
- Shades now requires class points for all spells
- Cold Flames: Detonate no longer inflicts friendly fire
- Fixed a bug with Cold Flames
- Crimson Barrier now expires when the damage limit is reached

(couldn't replicate the bug DAllan so I just rewrote the line your error called, hopefully that'll do it)

[DAllan7m]

This update didn't cure my save, and i don't want to start 3rd Necro immediately, so i'll put this addon to rest for some time. But before, some feedback.

I only played cold Necro to ~20 lvl on Normal (Cryomancer, someday i get you, i promise ), and dont have clear opinion on cost, cooldawn etc. For me its ok. But i'm not sure, how supposed to use double damage of Hungering Cold? In Spell / Grave tree only two way to freeze enemy: Hungering Cold, that can't freeze them for long enough, and Detonation of Cold flames. But on levels 12-20, where i played and tested, this combo - Cold Flames -> Detonate -> Hungering Cold - is almost useless. Normal enemies just dieing from Cold Flames with sustained Black Ice or may be immediately after Detonation, Rare monsters after 1st two moves probably dont have enough health to justify freezing and use of Hungering Cold on them (if they got frozen and not dead already), and Bosses... Well, bosses is perfect targets for this combo... if they not immune to freeze/stun, don't have too high phisical saves and don't just one shot your ice block :\
And lets face it - projectile of Cold Flames too slow to use it on long distance on bosses and you don't want let them be near you.

With unlocked Spell / Cold category (and not everyone have it (i'm not)) you have other option to freeze, but you need category point for this and your first category point need to be spend on Spell / Meta, because you dont want to upgrade Chill of the Tomb without Spellcraft, and Chill of the Tomb is you main nuke.

So looks like Hungering Cold don't get peak efficiency before level 20+, and only if you already unlocked Spell / Cold, am i right?

[Razakai]

Yes, unfortunately those LUA error loops pretty much kill your game regardless of fixes. It's a shame there isn't a rollback or backup option built in, though I generally find if I immediately hit task manager and force close the program it'll boot you back to the start of the level where (hopefully) you can avoid the LUA bug.

As for your feedback, that's useful to know as not many people have played pure cold necromancer. You're right that Cold Flames > Detonate > Hungering Cold was the intention for a boss killer combo, I'm not too bothered if regular mobs die early but if it's not usable on bosses that's a problem. In addition, it's intended that Necromancer shouldn't need the Ice tree, Grave+Reaping ought to be the best direct damage combo so Grave should definitely be viable without Ice.
I've been thinking about reworking Grave for a while now, so this will be the new tree:

1 - Frozen Orb. Same as Cold Flames, but new name (due to the Chill of the Tomb changes) and now in slot 1 because I think lower level necros would prefer a no friendly fire, shorter cooldown nuke at first.
I may increase the projectile speed and give it a radius 2 burst instead, but that may make it too strong. Did you find the slow speed awkward to use?
Detonate will lose the flames, but the freeze strength will be greatly increased so that bosses won't just 1 shot it. Maybe increase the area too.
2 - Black Ice. This can stay as it is, it seems fine.
3 - Chill of the Tomb. I've never liked how this was a plain old Fireflash clone with cold damage, so it will have the cost/damage slightly reduced but also spawn TL*5 cold flames. Provided you get a tick of cold flames it will be an overall damage buff, and give a second way of freezing, but less reliable.
4 - Hungering Cold. So now you have 2 methods to freeze: either detonate your orb, or wait until cold flames from CotT freezes. I will also slightly reduce the cooldown, and instead of Freezing, the secondary effect will be a Pin+Cripple effect. So now you can either try to pull off a big burst by waiting for freeze, or use it as a control spell to disable a crowd while still dealing decent damage.

How does that sound?

[DAllan7m]

...though I generally find if I immediately hit task manager and force close the program it'll boot you back to the start of the level where (hopefully) you can avoid the LUA bug.

My notebook is quite slow so saving is not instant and i have a lot of time to do so Problem is that Last Hope Graveyard is now off limits and my Necro never be Lich. Again. RIP Necro v2

In addition, it's intended that Necromancer shouldn't need the Ice tree, Grave+Reaping ought to be the best direct damage combo so Grave should definitely be viable without Ice.

Yes, Death Vortex and Black Ice is great combo, with it i can almost ignore normal melee not cold-immune enemies and just kite them a little before they die. For cold-immune i had lvl3 Invoke Darkness and could use Reaper's Mark and River of Souls. Was 7% exp short for Frostdusk. Sigh. By the way, am i right and you still need to die on level 24 to get maximum output from Lichform? Hope so, because fighting with elite undead that has 80% cold resist is quite hard without Frostfusk. Even cold-immune rare bears in bearscape was a lot easier.

...How does that sound?

I think it's very good. New status effects of Hungering Cold mean that even if somebody survived after it you not protecting your enemies AND have more time to deal with them. Nice!

Change positions of 1st and 3rd talents seems so justified when i think about it now. Chill of the Tomb too good for 1st slot, actually it's the most used spell in category to kill all. And placing it on 3rd slot you solve problem with necessity to hold before putting points in it to level ~10-12 when you can have 5/5 in Spellcraft. It's will be just natural.

On the other hand former Cold Flames was not so powerfull or useful for 3rd slot, and flames that it leaves are almost useless. But this talent still has problems - it's great in corridors against melee enemy, but so slow that archers and mages may kill you before projectile fly nearby. Even with melee it has problems - in open space against enemy with strange walking pattern (snakes), rush or disengage it can miss completly. But if you increase speed of projectile it will deal less damage to one enemy than now :\
And one little problem with targeting - if you want detonate projectile in target location you need choose target after that place, because projectile immedeatly disappear in it's target location. That is not really convenient. I was thinking about auto-detonation at the end, but this mess up with cooldown, so may be projectile can just stay one turn in target location before disappear? That way you will have 1 turn to detonate it where you sent it if you wish.

Upd. When i was writing this post i load my "bugged" save to check some names and encountered with new single time error-log:

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Lua Error: ...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:98: attempt to index global 'DamageType' (a nil value)
	At [C]:-1 __index
	At ...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:98 damtype
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:197 project
	At ...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:97 damtype
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:375 projectDoAct
	At /engine/Projectile.lua:244 check
	At [string "return function(self, x, y, what, ...) local ..."]:1 checkAllEntities
	At /engine/Actor.lua:205 move
	At /mod/class/Actor.lua:1032 move
	At /mod/class/Player.lua:273 move
	At /engine/interface/PlayerRun.lua:137 runStep
	At /engine/interface/PlayerRun.lua:105 runFollow
	At /engine/interface/PlayerMouse.lua:81 mouseMove
	At /engine/interface/PlayerMouse.lua:129 mouseHandleDefault
	At /mod/class/Game.lua:1983 fct
	At /engine/Mouse.lua:52 receiveMouse
	At /engine/Mouse.lua:90 delegate
	At /mod/class/uiset/Minimalist.lua:578 fct
	At /engine/Mouse.lua:52 

It's save where i encounter previous bug. So i went up the stairs, my Black Ice and Spellcraft still turned off. For some reason i used Cold Flames and immediatly saved and exited. When i loaded i steped (sometimes my pers wanders a little somewhere after loading) on projectile and got this message.

[Razakai]

That bug is rather unique from what I can tell. For some reason when Cold Flames calls it's damage type, somehow it wasn't able to find your character and so the bit where it assigns damage has broken. I don't think it's a combination of the unique way Cold Flames does damage and an odd interaction with leaving the level. Perhaps try detonating it? I think if you get rid of that problematic projectile the error should go away.

As for Lichform, 20 is the ideal level I believe. I do plan on making the life rating retroactive though, so regardless of level you'll still get the full benefit. I might see if I can put that in tomorrow night, so perhaps hold off on hitting the Lichform button until then. In addition, Lichform will change slightly - rather than Star Fury, you'll be getting some 'free' Lich specific spells. The first of which is Death Ray, a 3 cd beam nuke that does mixed Physical/Cold/Darkness damage and instakills low health targets. This means every Necromancer build will have a nice low cooldown nuke that costs negative energy, regardless of whether you focus on grave/nightfall/vampirism.

Cold Flames/Frozen Orb is a tricky one. I love the current idea behind it, but I can see how it's awkward to use. I'm ok with it being harder to use than the usual beam and bolts because the multi-hit aspect of it means it can do crazy damage, but I can see why it sucks to use against ranged/fast targets. I think the solution will be for it to move faster based on how far away you targeted and slow down over time - so at 10 range, it would reach there in about 3 turns rather than the current 6+. And then add your suggestion of having the projectile persist briefly. So against melee targets you can just drop it 2 tiles away and it'll hit 3 times, against a 10 range enemy you can drop it on them and it'll hit them within 3 turns for up to 3 hits. So still harder to use than the average spell, but with the potential of doing massive damage. Plus you'll have Death Ray for a reliable short cooldown nuke, and the new Hungering Cold to pin them in place to hit them repeatedly.

[DAllan7m]

Well, that is quite interesting. I have just loaded my save and took two steps. Both steps caused errors pop-up:

Code: Select all

Lua Error: ...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:98: attempt to index global 'DamageType' (a nil value)
	At [C]:-1 __index
	At ...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:98 damtype
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:197 project
	At ...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:97 damtype
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:375 projectDoAct
	At /engine/Projectile.lua:209 act
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:126 tickLevel
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:62 tick
	At /engine/GameTurnBased.lua:46 tick
	At /mod/class/Game.lua:1141 

Then i detonated projectile and got this error:

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[LOG]	Fenka casts Cold Flames - Detonate.
[SPELL CRIT %]	18.1
stack traceback:
	[C]: in function 'error'
	/engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:152: in function </engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:134>
Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:174: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:152: ...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:98: attempt to index global 'DamageType' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
	...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:98: in function 'damtype'
	/engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:197: in function 'project'
	...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:97: in function 'damtype'
	/engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:375: in function 'projectDoAct'
	/engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:463: in function 'projectDoStop'
	/engine/Projectile.lua:255: in function 'terminate'
	...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:326: in function 'damtype'
	/engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:197: in function 'project'
	...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:288: in function <...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:285>
	[C]: in function 'xpcall'
	/engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:147: in function </engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:134>
	At [C]:-1 
	At [C]:-1 error
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:174 useTalent
	At /engine/interface/PlayerHotkeys.lua:169 
	At /engine/interface/PlayerHotkeys.lua:161 activateHotkey
	At /engine/HotkeysIconsDisplay.lua:334 onMouse
	At /mod/class/uiset/Minimalist.lua:1842 fct
	At /engine/Mouse.lua:52 

Explosion happend, but projectile was still there! Cooldown not reseted also. But flames were on the floor.

I waited a few turns before projectile vanished but flames were still there. I got some errors but real fun started when no projectile was around and quite a few tiles of cold flames:

Code: Select all

Lua Error: ...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:98: attempt to index global 'DamageType' (a nil value)
	At [C]:-1 __index
	At ...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:98 damtype
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:197 project
	At ...eternaldarkness/superload//data/talents/spells/grave.lua:97 damtype
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:375 projectDoAct
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:463 projectDoStop
	At /engine/Projectile.lua:221 act
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:126 tickLevel
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:62 tick
	At /engine/GameTurnBased.lua:46 tick
	At /mod/class/Game.lua:1141 

I got several of this messages but not infinity of them. I didn't count them but may be 1 for every tiles... and every turn... and are they must stay for ~15+ turns? Well, even if they now stuck, i think that mean i can still clear that graveyard. I just need to let saving end and close all messages every turn. I might consider it :/
Or not, if i'm right and Steam downloading ToME 1.2.0 right now
But anyway, as i remember when i left vampire on the last floor there was some cold flames tiles and i'm not sure who left them, may be it was vampire.I hope it's useful information.

That's all with this saga for now. To other things:
So you changed Lichform and now it has only one talent level? Well, anyway i'm pretty excited to try it all out, and if you make live rating retroactive, it will make quest a little easier, by making rushing not necessary. 80% cold resist to Cold Necromancer without Frostdusk? Yeah

Making Frozen Orb work like this has other problem: that way it's losing ability to clear coridors from critters like pack of dragons or bandit leaders with their bands and so on. So may be consider adding piercing damage to it on talent level 3 or 5? Or add it to Black Ice on some level, that way only Cold or Hybrid-Cold Necro get it, and other just get good low level skill with good but not profiled damage and a little bit of crowd control.

Upd. Actually when i think about it, Frozen Orb has quite a lot of special properties for level 1 talent. It's projectile that can go through enemy, that damages enemies around itself in small radius on the fly, and it even can detonate for more damage and freeze targets. So may be some of it properties need to be higher in level? On the other hand making it dependant on sustain is making it vulnerable to enemys sustain-droping abilites...

And before i forgot again, i have very minor issue with Grave tree: names of 3 of talents is not "grave" enough for me But i dont know what to do with it

[YanniFirewind]

Attempting to use command staff results in one of these two errors.
This for vile type

Code: Select all

error = "Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorInventory.lua:396: attempt to index local 'o' (a nil value)\
  At [C]:-1 __index\
  At /engine/interface/ActorInventory.lua:396 takeoffObject\
  At /data/chats/command-staff.lua:128 set_element\
  At /data/chats/command-staff.lua:256 action\
  At /engine/dialogs/Chat.lua:93 use\
  At /engine/dialogs/Chat.lua:46 fct\
  At /engine/ui/VariableList.lua:123 onUse\
  At /engine/ui/VariableList.lua:98 fct\
  At /engine/Mouse.lua:56 receiveMouse\
  At /engine/Mouse.lua:94 delegate\
  At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:547 mouseEvent\
  At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:326 fct\
  At /engine/Mouse.lua:56 "
seen = true
reported = true

And this for the dark type

Code: Select all

error = "Lua Error: /data/chats/command-staff.lua:113: attempt to perform arithmetic on a nil value\
  At [C]:-1 __sub\
  At /data/chats/command-staff.lua:113 update_table\
  At /data/chats/command-staff.lua:136 set_element\
  At /data/chats/command-staff.lua:288 action\
  At /engine/dialogs/Chat.lua:93 use\
  At /engine/dialogs/Chat.lua:46 fct\
  At /engine/ui/VariableList.lua:123 onUse\
  At /engine/ui/VariableList.lua:98 fct\
  At /engine/Mouse.lua:56 receiveMouse\
  At /engine/Mouse.lua:94 delegate\
  At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:547 mouseEvent\
  At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:326 fct\
  At /engine/Mouse.lua:56 "
seen = true
reported = false

It also deletes the held staff.

[Razakai]

Seems there's quite a few bugs introduced since 1.20 came out. I'll go through the code over the next couple of days and fix it up, until then I'd advise using it at your own risk.

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/3922

v2.0
-Now compatible with ToME 1.2.1

[speczero]

I don't know if this is bug, intended or a conflict with addons but as of 1.2.1 the talent spellcraft at 100 percent does not stop any damage to my minions from chill of the tomb. By the way thanks for the addon, I can't even play a necromancer any more without it.

[Praxis]

Getting "Online profile disabled due to invalid addon hash". I am not using any other mods. Anyone getting the same error ?

It's not a big deal but achievements/deaths are not broadcasted in chat, otherwise fully playable, but still

[DAllan7m]

Getting "Online profile disabled due to invalid addon hash". I am not using any other mods. Anyone getting the same error?

Yep, getting it too. And Staff type "Dark" now broken - it's just copy of type "Vile"

Upd. You can't Detonate Cold Flames if you don't see projectile. Bug, i suppose?

[Praxis]

Eh I would comment on that but I only play pet necro.

I love having strong pets ( for insane+ difficulties ), so I've been testing Dark Empathy a bit.

My comments so far:

1. Dark Empathy Critical strike % is taken from your magical crit and added to both your minions phys and magic crits.

2. You can pop you short term buffs such as wild infusion, racials, possibly switch gear then Create Minions and they will permanently keep those stats.

3. Dark Empathy transfers more than just crit, saves and resists as described in the tooltip. One thing I noticed it also transfers Damage Mods, except crit multiplier, at 100% regardless of level of Dark Empathy. Like my char has +37% blight damage on the character sheet, so do all of my minions. Not sure if it actually affects their direct damage, need more time to test. Are there any other unmentioned attributes that transfer with that skill ?

[HousePet]

2. You can pop you short term buffs such as wild infusion, racials, possibly switch gear then Create Minions and they will permanently keep those stats.

3. Dark Empathy transfers more than just crit, saves and resists as described in the tooltip. One thing I noticed it also transfers Damage Mods, except crit multiplier, at 100% regardless of level of Dark Empathy. Like my char has +37% blight damage on the character sheet, so do all of my minions. Not sure if it actually affects their direct damage, need more time to test. Are there any other unmentioned attributes that transfer with that skill ?

These effects are actually innate to all summoning.