Unpleasantries found on the path to Necromancy; feedback

[Bahndriin]

TOME is undoubtedly a great and engaging game and one of the best roguelikes I have played so far, thank you for that Nicholas. Grievances detailed here do not diminish that, no matter how many of my characters died horribly, anti-climatically, unsatisfyingly and untimely in part due to some of this stuff.

1. Bone giants self-resurrecting via Re-assemble vanish from the party roaster and no can be longer sacrificed, recalled or follow player when changing level. However, this can allow you to have one extra giant even without using Animus ability. ...or a few more.
2. Celestial Light's area of effect healing spells should have a warning somewhere about having an opposite effect on the undead. ...or maybe latest category point should be unlearneable?
3. Zigguranine patrols can use magic, the blasted hypocrites. I have fought at least one Arcane Blade and a few Anothorils in their ranks (screenshot not included). ...and controlled slave combatant have automatically cast a few wyrmlic breath talents and shadow spells in the Ring of Blood, despite them not being listed anywhere.
4. Lichform should probably grant some lifesaving, especially accounting for the fact that makes you "violently reject" Waters of Life. The Master self-resurrects, bone giants re-assemble, the rest of undead have powerful intrinsic shielding abilities... The +3 life rating does not quite compare to that. I feel like my late character should have been issued a "Wet Tissue Paper Phylactery" achievement.
5. Necromancers don't collect ingredients when their own minions expire. Finding a "colleague" to collect their heart to fuel the Lichform transformation ceremony makes a lot of sense, but doing the same to collect a bit of bone giant dust is very weird.
6. Bands of adventurers and patrols are treated as separate and unrelated monsters and don't react to their comrades fighting you and dying just out of their LOS; player is able to 'r' indefinitely and pick off them one-by-one. Anti-climatic.
7. Fighting on the edge of the level looks and feels strange strange. Being able to "scroll away" for two tiles by pressing a direction key helps, but it is not enough if you are in the corner. I think it would help if you were able to scroll away into the nothingness a bit more. There is an opposite problem on the Maj'Eyal's world map — if your character acquires enough infravision, the parts of the map that are not meant to be shown and look bad can be seen (I'll make and add a screenshot here yet).
8. No one minds the player being undead and entering cities with a macabre cadre of minions, including a couple of bone giants. ...even a sun paladin. Wow. Perhaps there should be at least a minor dialogue related to that, maybe an imposed cost of having to leave your minions behind and lose them at first, then acquire a cloak of Deception after turning into undead or researching certain spell to conceal presence your minions, or something
9. Does Dark Empathy make undead servants resistant to the ray and AoE attacks of their comrades? I can only imagine what kind of havoc will start to happen when one of my characters will get Blighted Summoning. The skeleton archers have an opposite problem — most of the time the dungeon is either quite narrow or very crowded, so they start firing arrows only when an enemy is adjacent to them, making them very inefficient as minions. This applies to the enemy archers as well, they are not too dangerous or interesting as enemies. Perhaps it would be possible to give them ability to shoot arrows that pass safely through their comrades-in-undeath, with a decent cooldown and a percentage stepdown in damage?
10. Ability treat gems on the general grounds for the transmogrification purposes and invoke inventory items by typing their keys should probably be available in the vanilla game, without addons, about which many players may not even know about in the first place. This is a feature request, not a bug, I know.
11. I passionately agree with a point raised earlier on this forum about detrimental effect duration reduction, — it is regrettably useless at the moment. I have had a Lich Necromancer level 25 character with fairly high saves for a time, especially Mental, and I have not seen a reduction of at least 1 turn even once, they have either been shrugged off, or lasted the full duration. If this mechanic exists and makes sense, it may as well work as intended.

Thanks.

(Edited for style, clarity and a few additions. Repeatedly.)

[stinkstink]

...and controlled slave combatant have automatically cast a few wyrmlic breath talents and shadow spells in the Ring of Blood, despite them not being listed anywhere.

This is caused by the gloves they're wearing, most gloves have a chance to trigger a talent when you hit an enemy barehanded.

[Bahndriin]

This is caused by the gloves they're wearing, most gloves have a chance to trigger a talent when you hit an enemy barehanded.

Interesting, I was not able to find anything about it in the passive or sustained abilities descriptions. Does this also apply to talents that you don't know? Since every talent the slave combatant knows is dragged onto the hotkeys row and nothing like this is present.

[Mewtarthio]

Bone giants self-resurrecting via Re-assemble vanish from the party roaster and no can be longer sacrificed, recalled or follow player when changing level. However, this can allow you to have one extra giant even without using Animus ability.

I haven't seen this myself. Does it happen consistently for you, or is there some way to replicate it?

Celestial Light's area of effect healing spells should have a warning somewhere about having an opposite effect on the undead. ...or maybe latest category point should be unlearneable?

Only Bathe in Light does that, and, yeah, it should be more clear in the description. The rest of the tree is great for Necromancers.

Zigguranine patrols can use magic, the blasted hypocrites. I have fought at least one Arcane Blade and a few Anothorils in their ranks (screenshot not included). ...and controlled slave combatant have automatically cast a few wyrmlic breath talents and shadow spells in the Ring of Blood, despite them not being listed anywhere.

I've seen this, too. There's probably a bug in the power source filter somewhere.

Lichform should probably grant some lifesaving, especially accounting for the fact that makes you "violently reject" Waters of Life. The Master self-resurrects, bone giants re-assemble, the rest of undead have powerful intrinsic shielding abilities... The +3 life rating does not quite compare to that. I feel like my late character should have been issued a "Wet Tissue Paper Phylactery" achievement.

Strictly speaking, you can use Lichform to grant yourself a single extra life (by turning it on shortly before you would normally be killed), though that's generally too risky to be worthwhile. Lichform is definitely a risk, though. You could start as undead and get those nice racial resilience abilities, or you could spend the entire game living to keep your infusions, and you wouldn't be "doing it wrong" at all. You'll just have to decide for yourself if those benefits outweigh the bonuses you get from going Lich.

Necromancers don't collect ingredients when their own minions expire. Finding a "colleague" to collect their heart to fuel the Lichform transformation ceremony makes a lot of sense, but doing the same to collect a bit of bone giant dust is very weird.

Yeah, well your undead are shoddy knockoffs that crumble to dust if they spend five minutes outside your Necrotic Aura. The alchemists want quality ingredients.

Bands of adventurers and patrols are treated as separate and unrelated monsters and don't react to their comrades fighting you and dying just out of their LOS; player is able to 'r' indefinitely and pick off them one-by-one. Anti-climatic.

It'd be trivial to set it up so that all enemies immediately target you as soon as an ambush starts. I assume darkgod has it the way it is for a reason. Maybe because adventuring parties can be extremely dangerous if you're not careful, and having them all rush you at once would limit your tactics.

If it makes you feel better, try to imagine that you both managed to catch each other off-guard, and that you're really picking off the adventurers before their friends realize you're there.

Fighting on the edge of the level looks and feels strange strange. Being able to "scroll away" for two tiles by pressing a direction key helps, but it is not enough if you are in the corner. I think it would help if you were able to scroll away into the nothingness a bit more. There is an opposite problem on the Maj'Eyal's world map — if your character acquires enough infravision, the parts of the map that are not meant to be shown and look bad can be seen (I'll make and add a screenshot here yet).

Oh, it's infravision that does that? I've always wondered why that happened.

No one minds the player being undead and entering cities with a macabre cadre of minions, including a couple of bone giants. ...even a sun paladin. Wow. Perhaps there should be at least a minor dialogue related to that, maybe an imposed cost of having to leave your minions behind and lose them at first, then acquire a cloak of Deception after turning into undead or researching certain spell to conceal presence your minions, or something

People bring this up from time to time. It's mostly a gameplay conceit (souls are precious, so losing all your minions whenever you entered town would be annoying). I like to imagine that everyone's just too scared to draw attention to your retinue of walking corpses.

Does Dark Empathy make undead servants resistant to the ray and AoE attacks of their comrades? I can only imagine what kind of havoc will start to happen when one of my characters will get Blighted Summoning.

Nope; Dark Empathy only protects you, not your minions.

Ability treat gems on the general grounds for the transmogrification purposes and invoke inventory items by typing their keys should probably be available in the vanilla game, without addons, about which many players may not even know about in the first place. This is a feature request, not a bug, I know.

I'm afraid I don't follow.

I passionately agree with a point raised earlier on this forum about detrimental effect duration reduction, — it is regrettably useless at the moment. I have had a Lich Necromancer level 25 character with fairly high saves for a time, especially Mental, and I have not seen a reduction of at least 1 turn even once, they have either been shrugged off, or lasted the full duration. If this mechanic exists and makes sense, it may as well work as intended.

You mean reduction from saves? That really only kicks in when you've got a pretty good chance of shrugging the effect off, but it gets through anyway. Think of it as a failsafe.

[Bahndriin]

I haven't seen this myself. Does it happen consistently for you, or is there some way to replicate it?

It always happened to me when they use level 5 Re-assemble to bring themselves back from the dead. Try Sacrifice, they will die, come back and vanish from roster. They need to be Eternal Bone Giants for this to be possible, however.

Only Bathe in Light does that, and, yeah, it should be more clear in the description. The rest of the tree is great for Necromancers.

Yes, I imagine that detrimental effects removal and shielding are good, but Lichform Necromancers have at least two sources of healing already and you cannot heal your minions with Bathe in Light. If you have other reasons for this, please elaborate.

Lichform should probably grant some lifesaving.

Oh. I must have misread the +3 life rating as "extra lives". Still, I think that it should do so nevertheless, as "undying" property of Lichdom is very strong part of the lore.

Yeah, well your undead are shoddy knockoffs that crumble to dust if they spend five minutes outside your Necrotic Aura.

I will have your soul for the sheer insolence of this.

Maybe because adventuring parties can be extremely dangerous if you're not careful, and having them all rush you at once would limit your tactics.

I am not proposing that they all start in the range to open fire at you immediately, there could and should be a delay, but I feel that being able to 'r' indefinitely on such small map is atrocious from the narrative perspective. I disagree with your assumption that everything that is here is here for a good reason — some things are just not polished and developed enough due to the lack of resources. To know whether this particular is design or not, we will have to wait for the DarkGod's response.

Oh, it's infravision that does that? I've always wondered why that happened.

I am probably wrong here. Infravision only affects creatures, this must be a lite radius.

I like to imagine that everyone's just too scared to draw attention to your retinue of walking corpses.

Riiight, especially beings like demi-god Linanil and the legendary 50 level paladin in the Gates of Dawn. I can understand the gameplay balance considerations weighted against my proposal, but there need to be in-game flavour to address this.

Nope; Dark Empathy only protects you, not your minions.

Okay, then I re-qualify this as a feature request. I don't think that my minions need to be that disposable.

I'm afraid I don't follow.

I was speaking about gems not being placed inside the T.Chest by default. In most cases, Alchemists not-withstanding, they are not so special as to warrant this treatment. There is a mod to amend that, but it's not part of the vanilla game and most players might even not know about it's existence.

You mean reduction from saves? That really only kicks in when you've got a pretty good chance of shrugging the effect off, but it gets through anyway. Think of it as a failsafe.

This is the case I am talking about. You would think that 60 Mental save is enough to shave off a few turns off confusion of power 40, but nooo, this is not what have always happened to me. Okay, I might have exaggerated this a bit, but still.