"Odyssey of The Summoner" is OUT!! Find it here...

[Kamani]

Glad to here war hound will get its reflection pretty soon. Then I can go exploration mode one.

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Won with my Minotaur (link) and with 0 deaths!

I'll think more deeply about various skills later, but my initial thoughts are that Minotaur itself is fun and covers with weapon use what is usually a weakness of avatars in the early game. The character felt incredibly imbalanced and overpowered, but this was due to general avatar abilities and not Minotaur specific ones. In particular, I had 7 natural attacks with 100%+ crit chance, each being able to proc Helmbreaker. See what happened during final fight: https://imgur.com/slpkO00
Coupled with the gratuitous physical power, I killed every Pride boss, tunnel boss, and stairboss in about two bumps. And, here's the kicker, I wasn't even (ab)using Treasure Hoarder's Will!! Interested to see how my Ritch turns out, considering I'll have much the same attack combo.

[nekarcos]

@tabs
10,000 damage, huh? Welp, that's pretty unsettling. Maybe I'll need to make that damage scale down MORE for "super bosses" (much like how "Static Field" works). My tester also suggested that I allow the proc to be saved against-- Which is a good point.

Ah well. It seems the general consensus is that Minotaur is quite powerful-- And it is no doubt because of its access to both equipment and Natural Combat. I actually don't mind this-- But I DEFINITELY need to tone it down. Guess you'll be seeing that soon enough!

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Here's some more fine-grained reflections on Minotaur class skills:

• Brute Force
  1. Head Smash - Very few enemies had lower armor than me, so I can't say much about the confusion. The damage always seemed lower than I was expecting, especially when compared to the next skill...
  2. Widest Cleave - The damage scaling should be toned down. I can't tell exactly what's going on or the talents it's synergizing with, but I hit a dude for 10k (a single damage instance, not 10k cumulative!) with it. Also I never noticed anything being knocked back by it. This could be because most anything without knockback-resistance was instagibbed...
  3. Beckon the Gods - The flat resistance based on maximum HP needs to be nerfed. I had nearly 4k HP endgame....
  4. Devourer of Men - Healing needs to be reduced. For example, Vor *mancer orcs were like juicy HP-filled candies, giving me 400 healing each.
• Worship - I gave my thoughts about this tree. Only new thing is that I never got any benefit from Blood Ritual. No effect icon on either me or enemy that I could find, and no displayed change in phys power. Would have used Curry Favor if that change had been pushed through before I won
• Raging Beast - I already gave my thoughts about this one too, though I ended up using Headlong Charge a fair amount at short range because I was basically invincible and could take the risk. Thrashing can give goofy retaliation numbers, especially when taken over two turns. My defense was pretty high, though, so didn't get much use out of it.
• Seismancy
  1. Fissure - Still great in the early game. I almost never used it from Dreadfell onward.
  2. Pulse of the Earth - Even at 5 points the turn gain is lackluster. I assume this works with teleports in addition to knockback?
  3. Tremors - I can see how this might be useful once in a while against fleeing casters, but 30% slow (what I got at 5 points with near 200 encumbrance) is completely underwhelming.
  4. Fall Apart - Why would you waste points in this when you have Mailbreaker?
• Severance
  1. Hamper - Probably one of the best talents for the class. Would use even if it did no damage. Heck, even if it did damage to me.
  2. Separate - I don't understand why this one has such low damage, especially compared to Hamper which is strictly a better skill. The accuracy bonus has nice synergy with the next skill...
  3. Precise Hit - Great skill early and mid-game. No idea if this is possible in the code, but maybe it could last two attacks at TL5+?
  4. Hammer Down - Never used it because doing nothing for any number of turns is a good way to die. Compared to just bumping, the damage over the same number of turns is not impressive. It would be better if it emulated the Archer's Snipe skill and gave good immunities.
• Metal Rending
  1. Helmbreaker - Absolutely, completely overpowered for obvious reasons. There's a reason almost nothing in ToME does max HP% based damage.
  2. Swordbreaker - Chance to parry is good, but I had such absurd armor that melee attacks were already a non-issue. Seems like you'd need to micro manage this pretty constantly to keep from destroying good weapons.
  3. Mailbreaker - The crit chance is a fun mechanic, but the armor reduction should be limited to once per turn or something. As it is, one bump is enough to reduce almost anything to 0 armor.
  4. Shieldbreaker - I couldn't see a good use for this. Rarely do enemies have large shields compared to their HP. I don't know what you mean by "Break Guard." Isn't it redundant to grant both shield penetration and shield-removal? Speaking of redundant, the armor reduction!

[nekarcos]

VERY long response incoming!

@tabs
RE: Head Smash
Really? I've always found the damage to be extraordinary compared to a standard natural attack...

RE: Widest Cleave
I see my mistake here. I've given an AoE melee attack the damage numbers of a single-target move. The general rule is that AoEs should do 3 times less damage than a single target, but that might not be what I change.
I also looked at the exact damage modifiers, and the talent can do up to 270% damage IN A WIDE, AOE CONE at TL5, 1.00 Mastery, and maxed STR/Physical Power... Which is kinda nuts on top of what damage a battle axe may ALREADY do-- Plus your insane crits ("Hungry Eyes" plus the fact that "Axes" gain critical hit chance if your accuracy is higher than the target's defense).

All of this creates a recipe for pain. A very IMBALANCED recipe for pain. Too much spice-- Needs a bit more tang and salt. 10,000 damage? That'sa SPICY meatball!
The answer here might also be to nerf "Hungry Eyes" a little bit.

RE: Beckon The Gods
I believe it is less a concern with the talent, but the fact that Minotaur gets TOO much HP. Hydra and Fire Drake should be the pivotal classes for HP-bulkiness, while Minotaur (though bulky) should lean more towards Armor-- And finally, Ritch and War Hound are moreso Defense/Evasion. I DO have a nerf in mind, so I'm going to be lenient on this talent for now... Though, perhaps "100% Fatigue" is not nearly enough of a drawback to "tame" its powerful usage?

RE: Devourer of Men
... And to think that's the NERFED healing values...
Before release, it was influenced by Healing Factor, and I somehow "reversed" the resource penalties, meaning killing one Orc Pyromancer might have healed you for numbers between 2000-3000-- And let's not even talk about what happened when you killed an Archmage unique... ... ... Yeah.
Anywho-- The difficulty here is striking a balance between "too much healing because late game has a lot of mages" and "still usable in the beginning despite most of your enemies being large rats and angry plants"... So, for the time being, I'll probably just cut the healing a bit and see what breaks.


RE: Blood Ritual
I'll check this out to make sure it's working right.

RE: Raging Beast
The nerf is coming soon-- But I want to release it at the same time War Hound's reflections quest is done. Nobody would mind waiting for a nerf, right?


RE: Pulse of the Earth
Indeed. This was an experiment more than anything really-- And it turned out instances of being knocked back are... "Rare" once you start stacking up that Strength and Constitution stat.
What I MIGHT do is pump up the numbers a bit and turn it into a sustain that drops your knockback immunity to 0%. Be aware that this is NOT a category you will ONLY see on Minotaur (hint hint).

RE: Tremors...
Movement-slowing has VERY exponential effects as the numbers grow (20% slow = miss every 5th turn, 50% slow = miss every 2nd turn, 70% slow = miss 2 turns, etc...), so I have to be VERY gentle about how much I allow it to slow someone. It's also a completely free slowing effect that (in a manner of speaking) does not require a turn to even take effect. Finally, it also has VERY "paralyzing" effects on the AI since it will happily take a step while 70% slowed and not care about missing 2 turns-- So, if care is taken, it can be abused... HEAVILY. For that reason, I'm not sure I can touch this one. It's powerful-- But only in a very intricate way-- A way brutish, 10000-damage-dealing Minotaurs might not care about.

RE: Fall Apart
Hmmm... What would happen if one DIDN'T have Mailbreaker...?


RE: Hamper
I have begun to debate the sheer POWER of "removing" sustains. In several cases, it doesn't make sense, and can also "remove" most of what makes an enemy challenging. To be honest, this was entirely intended as a HARD counter to things such as "Bulwarks"-- But it has also proven effective on opponents such as Archmages, Corruptors, Demonologists, and even Mindslayers (how do you "slice" a particle shield away??)
... For the time being, I'm gonna leave this alone, but DO know I am *quite* aware of its... HEINOUS usefulness, and are still thinking of an "elegant" way to tone it down a bit...

RE: Separate
Indeed. Though this talent has the effect of removing physical effects, it was INTENDED to primarily deal damage through bleeding more than anything. I'm definitely gonna have a look at these numbers and see if I can make the "separation" effect a little more prevalent.

RE: Precise Hit
Indeed I can-- And an excellent suggestion at that! Consider it done.

RE: Hammer Down
Definitely a "gimmick" talent-- Mostly intended to allow the player to "flex" a bit by seeing how hard their character is capable of hitting. Its best utility in a heated fight is against "Dazed" enemies (whom can't move, deal damage, nor inflict ailments well) or foolish warriors that are approaching you in a predictable way.
... Oh, and I found out the "pinning" effect is bugged and doesn't actually happen. Whoops!


RE: Helmbreaker
Gonna make this work like "Static Field". It will deal SIGNIFICANTLY less damage if the target is ranked higher-- But it will still instant-kill Normal and Critter type enemies.

RE: Swordbreaker
It doesn't destroy Artifacts, mind you... At least, I don't THINK it does...

RE: Mailbreaker
Perhaps. However, then it becomes a question of "which" attack is going to reduce the armor... Perhaps, the numbers simply need to be modified a bit.

RE: Shieldbreaker
It removes "Blocking" from enemies with shields. Also, the "shield penetration" is there in case there are some other bizarre effects that require shield penetration to get through (it's a programmatic safety measure more than anything).
The armor reduction though... That was a remnant of the old effect, and I didn't want to change it up too much in case people got used to what it already did.



... Whew!

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Update on my postgame:

Killed Atamathon. Died once because I (foolishly) thought that Hamper would remove his reflection shield before applying the damage. Instantly killed myself (pic). After that it was just bumping him down for 1k a hit at the start. At some point a magical threshold was passed and Helmbreaker started kicking in, boosting my bumps to 10k a hit. (pic)

Killed Linaniil. Again used nothing but bumps after pre-casting my good buffs. Each incarnation had much lower HP than Atamathon, so Helmbreaker kicked in sooner. Again, did about 10k per bump. (pic)

RE: Devourer of Men
... And to think that's the NERFED healing values...
Before release, it was influenced by Healing Factor, and I somehow "reversed" the resource penalties, meaning killing one Orc Pyromancer might have healed you for numbers between 2000-3000-- And let's not even talk about what happened when you killed an Archmage unique... ... ... Yeah.

You'll enjoy this then.

[Kamani]

Poor Linaniil. Also, wow.

[nekarcos]

@tabs
Hahahah... Ohhhh man, I screwed up bad.

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Ok, here's some thoughts on Minotaur's generics:

• Bull
  1. Heat Up - I think I saw this give an extra attack about twice in my entire game. No idea why it's not working. The effect icon never displayed anything besides 0, 1 or 2.
  2. Provocation - I suppose this can synergize with Pulse of the Earth, but isn't practically useful for the same reasons.
  3. Serenity - Mindpower doesn't mean much for Minotaur. What constitutes a "Frenzy" effect isn't clear. The most useful part, tool CD reduction, doesn't scale well with investment at all.
  4. Raging Bull - I quite like this talent. The benefits from investment seem about right. Disabling Serenity is no big deal.
• Hoarding Beast, Natural Combat, and Inner Animal are all horribly broken due to the way they scale. Nothing specific to Minotaur except that Wild Savagery is even better.
• Stone Flesh
  1. Unravel Metal - I like this conceptually, but in practice it's so easy to get 100% hardiness from other sources that it isn't very useful. It seems to scale very poorly with point investment, especially considering that the bonus is uncapped.
  2. Abs of Steel - The armor gain is probably a little too generous: it gave me about 100 extra armor at 5 points. I actually forgot about this talent for the entire game and left it at 1 point. Oops!
  3. Crush Gems - Yeah, Minotaur's don't really need yet another source for obscene physical power. This talent would be much more interesting if it granted you the latent damage type of the crushed gem instead.
  4. Iron Heart - Never tempted me to put any points in it. It's like a worse version of Thalore's racial. The "Death Threshold" part is not clear.
• Wealth - To be honest I never put any points here or read the talents closely. I guess that alone says something?

[nekarcos]

@tabs
RE: Heat Up
I'm not sure why it wouldn't be working. Everything SEEMS in order... Hm.
The funny thing about this talent is that you rarely ever reach 100 charges before it triggers, so it can be hard to notice. At higher talent levels, it's a useful tool for giving you a head start on obliterating very annoying ranged targets such as mages.

RE: Provocation
In emulation of real ToME racials, not every talent is incredibly useful, and sometimes has VERY niche uses. On the other hand, this talent RIVALS the "Roll With It" prodigy, which left me VERY concerned...

RE: Serenity
- THIS talent is there to open the venue of a "Mind Power" Bull (NOT Minotaur, BULL). It serves no true "synergetic" purpose to Minotaur other than that.
- Some "Frenzy" effects Minotaur has are "Headlong Charge" and "Beckon The Gods". Some base ToME "Frenzy" effects are pretty much EVERYTHING that Orcs use, that "thing" Devourers do that make them scary, the power up that Dredge Captains give, etc... In short: There aren't many!
- The "Charm Cooldown Reduction" is intended to be weak for good reason. It can't be stronger than "Ambidexterity" or "Charm Mastery" or else it would be too much of a loaded talent.


RE: Unravel Metal
Higher talent levels only improve the efficiency of attaining 100% hardiness, nothing more, nothing less. When you invest points in it, think of it more like "I am losing less Gold", not so much "I am getting armor faster".

RE: Abs of Steel
The idea here is similar to "Scale Release": There will come a point where you are wearing *redundant* amounts of protection, so the talent is intended to allow you to "ease up" with what you wear and "optimize" your outfitting a little bit more. For example, it's not totally out of the question for a Minotaur to wear something like "Breath of Eyal" if they've already got rock-hard pecs...
... However, 100 armor at TL1? Hm. I think I will give it a "flat" armor boost and tone down the STR/CON scaling.

RE: Crush Gems
Purposely unbalanced. I was honestly curious what kind of numbers one could achieve in a single playthrough... Thought maybe everyone else would like to see for themselves as well!
If I had to rebalance it though, I would make it so that the bonus is half as strong, but the bonus now scales with the object's material grade (such that a "Diamond" would be 2.5 times more potent).

RE: Iron Heart
Depends how much you hate things like Spydric Poison or Weakening Disease. Either can be VERY annoying at an awkward moment.
Also, "Death Threshold" refers to "Die At", but I guess I worded that a bit poorly. I've changed that now.



RE: Wealth.
This tree certainly DOES seem useless... At a glance.
I fear it suffers the same dissuasiveness that "Cold-Blooded" used to have-- Before people started to realize how amazing "Headhunter" really was, so let me justify this talent tree a little bit:

The intention here is that "money" is a very useless thing to Avatars. This talent tree converts "money" into a sort of "escape mechanism" which you can use to get out of nearly any bad situation.
- Distraction: If there's an overwhelming amount of opponents, you can use this to get some distance. It also leaves PERMANENT traps on the ground that "confuse" certain types of enemies, so you can create "warding rooms" given you have enough "wealth" to do so.
- Glint of the Eyes: Telepathy when you kill something is good. Being able to purge mental and physical effects whenever you kill something is strong-- Resetting various talent cooldowns whenever you kill something is absurd. I don't really need to say more...
- Seize: This is Minotaur's ONLY instant-speed "dashing" talent. Enough said.
- Exchange: Use this on a Unique while you have 5 or more charges to instantly defeat it and everything around it.

The ONLY thing that comes to question is... Why does Minotaur have this...? Good question... Good question indeed.

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@tabs
RE: Wealth.
This tree certainly DOES seem useless... At a glance.
I fear it suffers the same dissuasiveness that "Cold-Blooded" used to have-- Before people started to realize how amazing "Headhunter" really was, so let me justify this talent tree a little bit:

The intention here is that "money" is a very useless thing to Avatars. This talent tree converts "money" into a sort of "escape mechanism" which you can use to get out of nearly any bad situation.
- Distraction: If there's an overwhelming amount of opponents, you can use this to get some distance. It also leaves PERMANENT traps on the ground that "confuse" certain types of enemies, so you can create "warding rooms" given you have enough "wealth" to do so.
- Glint of the Eyes: Telepathy when you kill something is good. Being able to purge mental and physical effects whenever you kill something is strong-- Resetting various talent cooldowns whenever you kill something is absurd. I don't really need to say more...
- Seize: This is Minotaur's ONLY instant-speed "dashing" talent. Enough said.
- Exchange: Use this on a Unique while you have 5 or more charges to instantly defeat it and everything around it.

The ONLY thing that comes to question is... Why does Minotaur have this...? Good question... Good question indeed.

Hmm, after reading your note and tinkering in-game I agree that it seems a strong tree. If I went again it'd probably be 1/5/5/0 worthy. On the other hand, even a good generic tree has to be compared to Natural Combat and Inner Animal, and every point in Wealth is a point in neither of those and a Wildness point lost This is exacerbated on Minotaur because you need at least 8 points in Combat Training.

[nekarcos]

@tabs
One of the nerfs Minotaur is getting is reduced mastery for both Natural Combat and Inner Animal, so those points might not feel nearly as good anymore.
ON THE OTHER HAND, Minotaur is also having its base "Wildness" decreased to 20 (from 30), so you'll be even hungrier for Wildness in order to get those more powerful talents in Inner Animal.
Overall, this change is going to push Minotaur's OPness back to the very end of the game and encourage you to look towards your "other" talents for improvement in the meanwhile. Ideally, I want to see Minotaurs that hardly even bother with "Inner Animal", prioritizing things like "Cold-Blooded" or their "Combat Training" talent tree.

These changes might sound harsh, but have faith-- I do it all for a very good reason.

[nekarcos]

A quick notice:

Because of how much I'm adding to OoTS, I've decided to go the extra mile: The next version is going to be 0.6.1, meaning there will be SEVERAL new features, and A LOT will change. There's not too much more to say than this, but it will mean this update will take longer than normal.

Let me know if there are any questions.

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Will it break savegames?

[nekarcos]

@tabs
Certain things (such as "Reflections Quests") will NOT like the version switch, and will definitely have some unstable behavior. Other than that, nothing else should break-- And if anything does, I'll TRY to prevent it with my usual "version fix" thing on the world map. Regardless, I'll give a warning when the drop is happening in case people want to wrap up their runs.