Time to Start Archmage Unlocked?

[5k17]

Calling their ammo limited is misleading at best and basically outright wrong at worst. I think you might even be able to have enough without even using extract gems using what you pick up, but even if you couldn't any concerns go right out the window with extract gems.

I'm not saying it severely restricts the player, but it is limited, in a way perhaps comparable to non-regenerating resources.

They aren't like one of the classes where even at level 50 you can still be skipping out on a bunch of other things.

Which is a level every new player attains.

Nevermind that saying that archmage is simple because most of its trees are focused on offense and that alchemist isn't (unless you're assuming that 'these trees buff your bombs' 'these trees buff your golem' 'this tree is general offensive stuff' is way too complicated for a new player--it's not like the trees are exactly hiding what they're doing) is kind of silly, anyway.

I said complex, not complicated, and I did not mean to imply that Alchemists (or any other class, for that matter) are noticeably more difficult to play correctly than other classes (apart from some balancing issues, of course). I do not like the existence of unlocks, but since a consensus to remove them is unlikely, basing them on complexity seems to be the best option.

I mean, you really can't mean to say that playing a wildfire mage and an ice mage are anywhere near the same thing.

They have at least three spells with similar effects IIRC.

[phantomglider]

I mean, you really can't mean to say that playing a wildfire mage and an ice mage are anywhere near the same thing.

They have at least three spells with similar effects IIRC.

What, Inferno/Glacial Vapors, Wildfire/Uttercold, and Blast/the ice pin pbaoe?

Those skills are similar, I guess, but cherrypicking those skills and then calling the two builds similar is kind of disingenuous. Wildfire's strength is in its massive area damage and cc - Ice doesn't have anything like Flame (high damage spammable - Ice Shards is kind of close if you squint a lot and are willing to accept worse damage), or Flameshock (massive area cc), or Fireflash (kill a whole room). It certainly doesn't have the even better damage that Burning Wake adds, or the debuffing and status protection of Cleansing Flames. In this context, Blast is a gtfo card that you use to get the space to kill stuff again, and Inferno is kind of a sideshow thing where you use it if you have the mana to spare and want to melt a room.

Ice has a lot of pbaoe, it uses Freeze to knock one big dude out of the fight, gets closish, then does ice pin + tidal wave + ice storm. Glacial Vapors is either your main ranged tool against groups too big for Ice Shard or more pbaoe + heal with shivgoroth form. Different skills do different things in different contexts.

[Judecca]

They have at least three spells with similar effects IIRC.

This is honestly probably by far the most disingenuous argument possible so I'm not sure what you expect me or anyone else to say--have you actually played both builds? Incidentally, the same argument re: build differences for archmages applies to wildfire versus earth or storm builds as well. (not so much arcane since it's in a pretty cushy spot, IMO, but I guess some people aren't fans of it so.. eh, whatevs. actually, then again, I like storm builds too but they do have some problems, but again most people don't like those either... well, whatever, you get the point. )

Also, being told that alchemists' ammo is unlimited as far as every player is concerned (unless you deliberately sit there throwing bombs at nothingness every few minutes for several minutes on end) and then saying 'but it's limited!!'' does not really say much. Can you honestly name a point in the game where without deliberately trying your best to do so (for whatever reason) the supposed limited availability of alchemist gems has been a problem? I certainly can't, especially since it's not like there aren't already respawning sources of loot in the game that Alchemist is particularly good at dealing with--not that this should ever, ever come up, mind, but the option is technically there.

Something being limited only actually matters when there is a chance of running out of it and having your game being ruined and that really isn't the case here, and even a new player will be able to recognize the fact that they get waaaaaaaay more than enough gems to have to even consider this.

Further, I didn't actually suggest or mean to suggest that alchemists can only round out a build that wants to include every single tree by level 50 only. The implication is that they have a much easier time doing so (i.e. that it's possible at all, really) before then unlike classes like, say, Archmage. Or Wyrmic. Or Shadowblade, etcetc, which can have perfectly workable builds at 30+, but won't obviously have everything even at level cap. (which is totally okay, mind you, just using those as random examples of things that have a bunch of class trees!)

[Kanos]

I'm not saying it severely restricts the player, but it is limited, in a way perhaps comparable to non-regenerating resources.

Alchemist gems are literally infinite. A single iron item found on the ground nets you 60-100 of them, which is enough ammunition to clear several entire dungeons. Pretending like they're actually any sort of factor besides to a complete newbie who might run out of ammo once and go "Oh, I see" and manufacture so many gems he never runs out again until he dies is disingenuous. They're the least limiting resource in the game and mostly exist to let you add additional affects to your bombs.

Which is a level every new player attains.

Alchemists have a very clear and simple build plan compared to most classes and it's almost impossible to make a "bad" alchemist build. It's quite possible to make weak and borderline unwinnable archmage builds. This applies at any level.

I said complex, not complicated, and I did not mean to imply that Alchemists (or any other class, for that matter) are noticeably more difficult to play correctly than other classes (apart from some balancing issues, of course). I do not like the existence of unlocks, but since a consensus to remove them is unlikely, basing them on complexity seems to be the best option.

Arguing that alchemists are "complex" is sort of strange because aside from some oddity with bomb mechanics(that new players don't really need to know or care about) they're easily the most straightforward caster in the game to play. As mentioned earlier, gems are a complete non-issue that a newbie will stumble over once and then never again. The golem is straightforward as hell and autopilots himself. Bombs become set it and forget it mini-nukes that can be hurled around with complete abandon and blow up entire rooms by the mid to late 20s, which is a level many newbies do reach, especially on an alchemist.

They have at least three spells with similar effects IIRC.

The only spells that archmages have that have identical effects are the end-of-tree "increase damage/ignore enemy resist" sustains at the end of their unlockable elemental trees. The beams are very similar but have different strengths and weaknesses(fire is damage over time, lightning is wildly variable, manathrust is low damage unless you're arcane). A fire/wildfire archmage is in a different world of power and utility compared to a water/ice archmage of the same level and the way they approach encounters is pretty different.

The classes that start unlocked seem to be based largely on accessibility and ease of play, which is why you have Bulwark, Archer, and Berserker there. You could make an argument that some like Arcane Blade should be removed from them, but Alchemist is just as straightforward as a Bulwark. Would you argue that Archer needs to be locked because the ammo system makes it too complex?

[5k17]

This is honestly probably by far the most disingenuous argument possible so I'm not sure what you expect me or anyone else to say--have you actually played both builds?

Not much, I prefer to play storm, arcane or unspecialized.
I was never trying to say that differently specialized Archmages play exactly the same, but there are some overlaps between most viable builds. Of course, specialized Archmages are irrelevant when we are discussing players who neither have unlocked the second trees of each element nor are likely to attain a level where they could make much use of those trees if they had them.
For Archmages, there is just one kind of attack: spells, in the early game pretty much necessarily including Flame and/or Lightning. Alchemists, as I said, must choose between building bombs or golemancy, and for ranged attacks have the fundamentally different possibilities of bombs and staff channelling; their relative lack of squishiness and presence of their golem also allow them to go into melee. I think that the early-game complexity is about the same build-wise, but in regard to gameplay, Alchemists have more, and more different possibilities, which I believe require more experience to use correctly.

Something being limited only actually matters when there is a chance of running out of it and having your game being ruined and that really isn't the case here, and even a new player will be able to recognize the fact that they get waaaaaaaay more than enough gems to have to even consider this.

The problem is not that you can run out of alchemist gems, but that there are other uses for their source, such as selling them.

[Frumple]

Eh? Alchies roll in alchie gems and still have enough unalchemized gems to outstrip the gold production of a few other classes combined. As in an alchie will have functionally unlimited ammo and spew out enough gold in the process to equal two or three other full runs of the game.

And, as Jude noted, Alchies are one of the best classes in the game for farming adventurer parties, which with extraction produces fairly ludicrous amounts of gold, if for some unfathomable reason (like, maybe not investing in stone alchemy at all, I guess. You'd still never run out of bombs, but you wouldn't be nearly as rich.) you haven't broken the game with merchant artifacts before even being tempted to do so. Gold isn't a limited resource for an alchie willing to grind even minimally.

It's... look. You could completely remove alchemist gems and it wouldn't meaningfully impact alchemist gameplay at all, insofar as resource constraints go. You could double alchie gem costs, and it wouldn't meaningfully impact alchemist gameplay at all. Triple, quadruple, whatever, you bump it up 10x and you'd still have only minimal issues, and then only in the early game.

Alchemist gems are only nominally limited, and their only notable gameplay impact is the bomb effects (though, being fair, it's a nice effect and I'm glad it's in there. A specific gem slot for bomb effects might be a good idea, though.)... not their limited amount, nor that you occasionally have to eat some gold-equivalent items to get more. You get exponentially larger amounts of unalchemized gems than any other character in the game (holds true for anyone that manages to nab up stone alchemy, but that's neither here nor there.). Alchemist gems add to the complexity of alchemists a bit, yes, but it's not the ammo counter aspect that does it.

[Judecca]

I was going to comment on alch gems but yeah Frumple beat me to it.

The absolute worst case scenario in which you somehow manage to break down every single equip-able item you aren't wearing and then sell every gem but leave yourself with 0 alchemist gems and no money to even buy a single piece of equipment with which to break down into alchemist gems to use for ammo is... uh, well. Yeah. Basically impossible. If someone somehow leaves themselves in such a state then it's kind of on them because you'd basically have to go out of your way to achieve that.

Also I have literally never heard of anyone doing melee alchemist, even as a gimmick. I know they have Defensive Stance and Blunt Thrust but I have not even heard of a newbie trying to use those to seriously melee--I hear about more staffzerkers than I do melee staff alchs. Also, channel staff spam and bombs aren't really supremely fundamentally different in such a way as to be horribly jarring--one of those has no cooldown and is a generic tree and the other does and is a class tree, so they aren't even interfering with each other. About the worst possible thing you can say is "well sometimes someone ignores bombs because they're weak earlygame" but you could also skip meta as an archmage, or ignore your big aoes, or unironically invest in glacial vapours as an early game spell, or try to go split elements and end up with subpar damage (relatively for an archmage, but still undesirable especially if you're new--damage is always good!) due to not being able to get dual element staves or being too thinly spread around, or invest in Temporal (or whatever the essence of speed tree is called) early.. hell, even once you have Meta, it's shockingly easy to kill yourself when you eat a manaclash or otherwise have Spellcraft get bumped off and suddenly oh god your flesh is melting from aether breach/flashfire/etcetc. That's to say nothing of how new players have trouble with their start quest, mind you, until they get the hang of dodging. Or Disruption Shield hijinks.

That's a lot more threatening than "well you have to choose between more bombs or more golem or that other tree that also does damage".

Unlocking the second tier elements for Archmage while still being new to the game isn't very far-fetched, either. My first character to hit 40 was an alchemist who was also the one that unlocked pyromancer for me. Looking at my personal achievements, I did that within 2 weeks of my first character that hit level 10, and I know for a fact I was still new as hell and was missing quite a few classes or had literally 0 experience with most of them by that point. I also had eye of the storm within 2 days of my level 10 achievement, so there's that, unless we're very narrowly defining new player here or something. I can assure you I was hilariously terrible back then as a player, too, but, well... yeah, appropriate to the conversation, Alchemist carried my newbie ass.

(joke's on me i'm still a bad player AW SNAP)

[Kaja Rainbow]

Yeah, Alchemist makes the fire/ice damage achievements trivial to achieve if you manage to last until the endgame (or, I've heard, play them in arena mode). Just invest into fire/ice bombs and you're done.

It kinda seems like the folks talking about the difficulty of playing alchemists are just theorizing themselves about it rather than speaking from personal experience, or else they've had entirely different experiences than me and a number of other people.

[skein]

Heh, I am playing a melee alchemist right now. They are surprisingly effective but whether they are really alchemists is up for grabs.

The base alchemist has two important trees, stone alchemy and spell/ explosive admixtures.

You can win with stone alchemy 5/5/0/0 and explosive admixtures 5/5/5/0 and a couple of movement infusions. Pretty much by level 12 you can have every single resource you need to win the game.

The problem is that so MANY new alchemists ignore bombs and ignore stone alchemy. You cannot do it without both. You cannot do it with golems, you cannot do it with fire alchemy. You can spend 40 points on golems, you can spend 20 points on fire alchemy, you can spend 20 points on infusions. You can also waste all your generic points. So YES you can build a non winning alchemist, it is fairly common for new players to do so.

It is a major design flaw that all the other trees add so little utility. It is imperative that a new alchemist needs to know to build bombs first. It is also not that hard to give them that clue but give it you must. The first time many possible alchemists throw a bomb is the last time they do so. It looks wimpy;) Looks can be deceiving. The golem LOOKS tough, also a deception.

[Pyris311]

I love the locks. With there were more (with more classes). However, for some reason this is one of the big reason why some people *HATE* ToME. They feel locking core content is "artificial way to improve playability". As a matter of fact, more than one Pastebin discourages people from playing this game on weird grounds, such as "its too bloated" or "it looks like WoW" (WoW? WTF?).

Again, I love the locks but for some reason lots of roguelike players, players that would take the time to make a pastebin for newbies, actively discourage new players due to great features such as content locks (unlockable by in-game feats), chat window, special effects, etc.