Favorite game breakers

[edge2054]

I'm also working on making the chronomancy spells that are being abused for RNG scumming less scummy. A certain amount of this is unavoidable but scumming which escort you get isn't what the spells where designed for. (Hopefully DttP will be easier to use for it's intended purpose when I get through with it).

[lukep]

I hope that most of these get fixed sometime. I have three that I think break the game the most, and have ideas to fix. (apart from Manasurge chaining and Door to the Past scumming, which were already mentioned)

Probability Travel: one nerf that would fit well with the name would be to have the exit be a random open square on the other side of a cone (that narrows at higher talent levels) instead of a beam. Another idea in the same vein is a (50, 40, 30, 20, 10)% chance to be transported in a cone instead of a beam. A third idea is random chance of random Phase Door instead. These fit with the randomness that "probability" conveys to me.

Speed Stacking: merge Elemental Harmony, Invigorate, and (the good half of) Borrowed Time into the Speed effect, as they all do the same thing, temporary increases in Global Speed. This would prevent most crazy stacking of speed effects. Essence of Speed would be unaffected, because it is a sustained talent. I don't know what could be done about movement infusions + high speed, perhaps nothing.

Supercharged Disruption Shield: I don't think it should be able to reach high enough damage to instantly kill the final bosses. Instead of deactivating at 0, it could deactivate at ([1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2] * damage absorbed) mana. This would limit the explosion to under 4000 damage (with everything I could think of for the player character), as well as forcing you to deactivate it periodically.

[edge2054]

Borrowed Time can't really be moved over to a 'Speed' timed effect because it has special effects on time out. Right now though +speed is stacking oddly (at least imo). I posted a bug report on it.

[overtrix]

Probability Travel is forever a decision which changes the game - in ToME 2 you could even use it to tackle Morgoth without him ever knowing what happened, a matter of diagonals. One compromise is to accept it as a last resort when caught in the poo, but turn it off when slaughtering stuff.

[lukep]

Now one for the Summoner:

Warper (preferably lvl 5) + Summon Control + Earth's Eyes: If done from a safe area (preferably enclosed by doors), this would allow you to view the entire level, then reach and attack all of the enemies with the Warper, using controlled Phase Door, without placing your main character at any risk. EDIT: Warper was removed.

[Grompus]

Not really a game-breaker, but it defintely made the Arena easy-mode.

Archer + aim + phase door. Just sit on in the middle with aim on and it really is rediculously easy - pop pop pop, anything comes close phase door (and aim stays active).

None of the bosses got more than 2 steps out of the gate.

[lukep]

Another for the Summoner (made the boss guarding the farportal room way too easy)

Summon melee monsters + 11 infravision: stand 11 squares away, and summon monsters next to the enemy (10 squares from you). The enemy will target the summons, kill them, then sit there. Repeat as necessary. A bit too restricted to be of much use, because it requires that nothing passes it you as a target.
@:main character
S: Summon Monsters here
M: the enemy (can be a boss)

Code: Select all

@.........SM

EDIT: much easier to do around a corner.

[lukep]

Summoning through Walls: cast a summon spell at a wall tile. The summon will appear at the nearest open tile, even if it is on the other side of the wall.

[Stormlock]

Regen Infusion + Bloodbath + Deathblow can produce some insanely powerful healing, although it takes 2 turns to set up.

[lukep]

Bow Mastery + Aim + Steady Shot: insane amounts of damage, since (I believe) the Aim bonus to damage is applied before the damage is doubled by Bow Mastery, or more than doubled by Steady Shot. Add in a high chance of critical hits, and an optimized character can almost one-shot adventurers throughout the rest of the game. At lvl 45, I was dealing 1200-1500 damage on critical hits, about 50% of the time.

[Hedrachi]

Precise Strikes+Mortal Terror+Garkul's Teeth. At level 44 I had a 53% crit chance, could crit for 1100-1400 with Warmaster Gnarg's Murderblade, and had 25ish hp/turn regen after a crit, before Providence or Infusion: Regeneration. Pop Providence rank 3 and Infusion: Regeneration, with 5/5 Power is Money, anything my saves didn't reduce to 0 turns, Providence would remove. Regeneration on top of that, and all I needed was a crit to get 450hp regen/turn, with healing mod factored in. Factor in bloodrage upping my str to 127, with a 53% crit chance, and 5/5 death dance... not much that wasn't yellow or harder to kill survives.

[lukep]

Various Doomed Skills + Telepathy, Detection, Arcane Eye, fixed layouts, or guessing: the Doomed skills Willful Strikes, Agony, Hateful Whisper, Devour Life (Lvl <5), and perhaps others can be cast on any square within their range, without respect to LoS, allowing you to cast them through walls (probably including the Room of Death, and vaults) EDIT: Still works, even in b35 alpha.

[lukep]

Elemental Harmony (fire, lvl 5) + Speed effect (Eden's Guile) + Invigorate (lvl 5) + Rampage (reflexes lvl 5) + Yeek (lvl 5): 549% global speed, allowing Rampage to last through 50 actions over its 9 turn lifespan.

Body of Stone (lvl 6+) + Earthen Missiles (lvl 5+) + High Global Speed+ Black Robe, Lunar Shield, Eelskin Armour, or Fiery Choker: at least 6 hits per player turn, giving many chances for equipment triggering spells. Global speed can be increased by Essence of Speed, Elemental Harmony, and Speed effects (like runes or equipment), giving about 300% global speed, and 18 hits per game turn. Can also be done with fire trees and Burning Wake instead of Body of Stone and Earthen Missiles.

[Aquillion]

Can also be done with fire trees and Burning Wake instead of Body of Stone and Earthen Missiles.

And it works better with those, since then you can activate Elemental Harmony easily whenever you want, while burning off unwanted status effects.

[edge2054]

Maybe not quite a game breaker but...

Quicken Spells + Runes of Shielding + Shielding + Resilient Bones

Running around with this combo right now and have a base 15 cooldown Rune of Shielding down to 11 cooldown with 11 duration and 9 turns of saturation on autocast. So basically I always have a shielding rune going and it takes zero effort on my part to keep it up

Quicken Spells + Shock + Hurricane

This gets the Shock cooldown down to 3 so I can not only fit it into my lightning bolt/mana thrust rotation but also so I can keep a monster chain dazed if I want.. or just keep dazing it till hurricane procs.

Here's the character build, halfway through Daikara and haven't put a single point in Con. Darkgod mentioned in IRC that mages didn't need Con to survive, because they have shields. I figured I'd put it to the test

http://te4.org/characters/81/tome/4a415 ... 25900d6212