Midnight (v1.13)

[kemott11]

Does Midnight change anything about the Anorithil or Sun Paladin after 1.5?

[HousePet]

Anorithil, yes. Sun Paladin, not really.

[kemott11]

I get this error when Sun Paladin escort tries to enter the portal.

[HousePet]

I found that yesterday, but steam wasn't working to accept the upload.

[sajberhippien]

Bug report regarding Star Elf's Starlight ability. Two or three issues, from most to least important:
1. The increase in invisibility detection is not lost when deactivating, at least according to character sheet. Repeatedly reactivating the talent will permanently increase your invisibility detection.
2. The description states that it decreases light radius and heightened senses but increases detection. In fact, it decreases light radius but increases both heightened senses and detection. Seems like either the description or the mechanics are off.
3. Might be intended but the detection bonuses seem so low they're irrelevant. If point 2 is a description error, I could see the use in heightened senses from the talent, but the detection bonus is so small it can be completely ignored.

EDIT: Also, Star Elf's primary racial, Shadow Swell, only has its negative energy generation increase per talent level (and the cooldown is also reduced). Intentional? Seems very niche to put more than a single point in it.

EDIT: Also, Moon Paladins having Chants but not Hymns - is that intentional?

[HousePet]

1: Damnit! Oh well, its not game breaking.
2: Description error. It is supposed to increase heightened senses.
3: Its supposed to support, rather than replace other sources of detection bonuses. However, those mechanics might have been written since I made this talent. (Or I just got the number plain wrong.)
Edit1: Racials scaling with a stat, not level was a theme I stuck with.
Edit2: Intentional.

[Erenion]

Another thing: Warped Space (from the Deep Space tree) says it scales with spellpower. It does not.

[Erenion]

And two more things: Mardrops racials break at higher talent levels.
The breakpoints are ~10 for Mana Flare and 12 for Chromatic Flash.

[sajberhippien]

1: Damnit! Oh well, its not game breaking.
2: Description error. It is supposed to increase heightened senses.
3: Its supposed to support, rather than replace other sources of detection bonuses. However, those mechanics might have been written since I made this talent. (Or I just got the number plain wrong.)
Edit1: Racials scaling with a stat, not level was a theme I stuck with.
Edit2: Intentional.

Thanks a lot! These things all seem to make more sense now. Though granted I personally disagree with the design of initial racials not scaling with talent level, it does make the race look more in line with the vanilla races.

I just hope in the future that vanilla races are redesigned for skill level to matter a bit more.

[sajberhippien]

So, on the star elf.

First off a (description) bug report; Shadow Swell states that the stealth bonus scales with Dexterity, but doesn't mention the Evasion bonus doing so.

Secondly, a question. How does the evasion bonus work? Is it like the Mobility talent named Evasion, a percentage chance to avoid hits? If so, how does it stack with that ability?

Thirdly, Starlight. I know it's meant to be augmenting your other detection talents, but it just seems so extremely niche. For it to be worth investing in you basically have to have already completely maxed Heightened Senses, or have somehow gotten enough infravision that it at least matches your light radius... Which I think also is fairly circumstantial and rare. And while Heightened Senses is a great place to put a point, I don't often see it maxed by anyone.

Basically, if you don't have Heightened Senses, it's useless. If you have heightened senses, it's a worse place to put points than HS itself, unless you've already maxed it - and I don't really know what build would want to max HS and spend even more points into vision radius. With 1.0 in Survival, HS has 4+tLevel range, and each point beyond the first increases creature detection with between 4 and 10, averaging 6.3. And it also provides trap detection. Starlight gives tLevel range, and 2 points of creature detection per talent level. And instead of additional benefits, it gives a circumstantial but notable drawback; when your light radius is notably higher than your infravision/HS range, activating it for the creature detection punishes your vision.

I know there's plenty of racials that are 1-point-and-move-on in almost every case, but I think that's a flaw in their design. While racials shouldn't be obvious 5/5's, and might be circumstantial, I think there should be at least a handful of builds for which you'd be interested in putting more than one point.

Right now I'm playing a star elf necromancer, a class/race combo that should synergize well on paper, and (due to Eternal Darkness) has some stealth access and thus can utilize infravision/HS well, and that has plenty of generic points to spare, *and* has Survival at 0.9 (the lowest unlocked in the game AFAIK) which actually does mean it misses out on a range upgrade (at level 3>4). To my mind, it should be the absolutely perfect match, except potentially starslingers (I haven't played them much). Still, I just can't see myself putting more than a point into it. 8 HS range is fine (at 3/5 HS and 1/5 Starlight), and if I had two points to spare I'd rather take the +1 range, +8/9 creature/trap detection of 5/5'ing HS than the +2 range, +4/0 creature/trap detection of 3/5'ing starlight - especially considering it's drawback.

I don't have a solution for this, and it's not like it's a dealbreaker for the race or anything, I just think it's a bit of a waste to have a talent that even in optimal circumstances (from my perspective) isn't worth investing in.

EDIT: And a question for advice that really belongs in the Arcanum thread but don't want to bump the thread unnecessarily. Since I'm using Arcanum, I might be getting access to an extra category of magic. I'm a Star Elf Necromancer seeking Lichdom. I'm not using any minions except the husk at the moment and probably will only go minimally into it for the occacional chaff. Any advice on what category I should be aiming for? I'm probably going to go a single unlocked at .8, in order to save category points. I guess I should get something to compensate for the lack of mobility brought by Lichdom, or something that will help me with status effects, but I don't know exactly what; part of the mobility issue is that conveyance gets shut down by Silence, but so will any other (non-sustain) spells also be.

[HousePet]

Thanks Windows for doing an update while I was still writing a reply here!

The evasion bonus is just like the Evasion talent, but at lower value and with no extra defence. It does not stack.

I realise the Starlight values are a bit low. I think I was being conservative due to it stacking with alternate sources, and I think those other talents may have been buffed since I wrote this.

As for learning a new category, that depends on whether you have excess generic or class talents and whether you want more damage or utility.
Being shutdown by silence is an issue for Liches. I suggest you consider Unbreakable Will prodigy, or keep a look out for anti silence/high mind save equipment (wintertide phial perhaps?).
Conveyance is a reasonable generic mobility option.
Void would be a good choice for extra darkness damage, but Angolwen won't teach such dark magics...
Water might be interesting option for Freeze and Shivgoroth Form (though perhaps not useful for a Lich). No minions means that you don't have to worry about friendly freezing from those spells.
Earth could be useful for Stone Wall and Blessing of Felia boosts physical damage.
Frost Alchemy would involved spending two points in useless talents to then get Flash Freeze and Ice Core.
Air would get you Feather Wind, but you won't want anything else in that category.
Meta is a maybe, cos I've never been able to quantify how useful it really is.
Temporal is good for an extra shield and mobility.

[sajberhippien]

I think part of the issue with Starlight is that the things it gives are things you only benefit from in a limited amount, so the amount it gives doesn't matter that much; the difference between infravision 8 and infravision 10 is small, and the difference between 10 and 20 neglible. I don't have much in the way of suggestions for fixing it, other than something as vaguely as adding a different kind of benefit to it that's more actively useful.

Being shutdown by silence is an issue for Liches. I suggest you consider Unbreakable Will prodigy, or keep a look out for anti silence/high mind save equipment (wintertide phial perhaps?).
Conveyance is a reasonable generic mobility option.
Void would be a good choice for extra darkness damage, but Angolwen won't teach such dark magics...
Water might be interesting option for Freeze and Shivgoroth Form (though perhaps not useful for a Lich). No minions means that you don't have to worry about friendly freezing from those spells.
Earth could be useful for Stone Wall and Blessing of Felia boosts physical damage.
Frost Alchemy would involved spending two points in useless talents to then get Flash Freeze and Ice Core.
Air would get you Feather Wind, but you won't want anything else in that category.
Meta is a maybe, cos I've never been able to quantify how useful it really is.
Temporal is good for an extra shield and mobility.

Interesting suggestions! Conveyance comes with the class (at 1.2). Since I'm not to 60 Magic yet, I can't see exactly what Angolwen provides so I just started an Adventurer to look through the options and don't know which are available and not. The four categories I ended up writing down were:
Meta: Removing magical conditions is useful, as is a general buff to spellpower. The resetting of cooldowns would be useful for prolonged blasting, and ED Necro has quite a few powerful t2 spells with longish cooldowns (circle of death, the blood barrier). Preventing pets getting hurt in blasts would've been useful if they weren't already immune to Nightfall and (though i suspect it might be a bug) Grave.
Temporal: As you say, great shield, great mobility. That mana cost though...
Void: Embrace the darkness! Also flavorful, which is a nice bonus. But as you say it's not available so...
Arcane Enchantments: Seems like quite a bunch of nice bonuses especially when they're not competing with another enchantment (unlike for enchanter) and won't cost mana. It's notably less powerful without stone alchemy, but you still find enough gems that getting the bonuses of three gems, generally t5 or good t4's, seems like it's worth the points. And runestaff would allow another escape rune of some kind. But is arcane enchantments even available?

I'm not particularly worried about lack of damage given Eternal Darkness' buff to Grave combined with the general usefulness of Nightfall and Sky Fury from being a lich. I considered the elemental ones, especially air as in addition to feather wind, Chain Lightning allows semi-sniping and extreme ranges that my other blasts don't, but it still seems a bit meh compared to the four above.

[HousePet]

Oh yes, Enchanted Trinkets is available and potentially quite useful. It will become available once you have 60 magic.

[kemott11]

Hey, I have been testing and I'm 99% sure that Midnight breaks something with Cults. When it is active you can't read any forbidden tomes as it says you are in combat.

Was using many addons and it all came down to this one. To test it I created halfling/human berserkers, killed a few trolls, auto explored a bit, went to last hope and spawned a forbidden tome in dev mode(and it said I'm in combat). I had to do that all to make sure, because when you spawn a forbidden tome right after starting the game you can read it.

Would be good to know if you can replicate that.

[HousePet]

I can replicate this and I have no idea what could be breaking.
Will look into it.

Edit: Looks like I'm still overwriting actor:actBase() to make celestial energy regen modifiers work, even though I got a fix for it into the base game over a year ago.