[1.4.4] Eternal Darkness - A Full Necromancer Rework v2.21

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/eternaldarkness

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Before anything else, I'd like to thank the TE4 community for their assistance in this addon. Players such as Shibari, Grayswandir and Doctornull have provided useful assistance and feedback, and in particular credit is due for Housepet, as it was his Necromancy+ addon that provided some of the ideas

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This addon is a large scale rework of the Necromancer class. Virtually every aspect of the class has been tweaked in some way to make it more effective, fun and with a better variety of builds.

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Changelog -
v2.21
- Fixed a bug with Animus Purge
v2.20
- Fixed a bug causing invalid addon hash
v2.19
- Fixed staff error with 1.4.1.
v2.18
- Fixed Black Tentacles
v2.17
- Should now be compatible with Deathknight
- Improved code compatibility in general via less superloads
- Fixed a display bug with Lich talents
- Surge of Undeath no longer grants extreme amounts of die_at
v2.15
- Removed some unused code to improve compatibility
v2.14
- Now fully 1.3 compatible
- Fixed a number of small bugs and typos
- Corpselight now works correctly
- No longer superloads actor.lua, fixing a number of issues with Ashes content and other addons
v2.13
- Surge of Undeath now applies the correct values
- Fixed a bug with Exsanguinate
v2.12
- Surge of Undeath applies a frenzy effect rather than healing
- Consume Soul heals your minions
- Essence of the Dead has temporarily had some effects removed pending rework
- Crimson Barrier now has a base shielding value in addition to the percentage value
- Fixed a bug with Exsanguinate when used on certain tiles
- Blood is Power only drains health while an enemy is visible
- Minions should no longer hit the summoner with negative effects
- Minion Mastery summons now have increased spellpower, mindpower and accuracy
- Liches no longer spawn with antimagic equipment
- Fixed a bug with acid traps
- Black Tentacles now correctly obeys line of sight rules
- Death Vortex uses the correct range
- Tidied up descriptions
v2.11
- Fixed a major bug with Icy Talons
v2.10
- Fixed the tooltip for Icy Talons
- Slightly reduced the damage of Gravespike
- Icy Talons now grants the correct amount of spell haste
- Gravespike and Corpselight projectiles now pass through allies
v2.9
-Fixed a bug with Lichform costing class points
-Minor fixes to the values of some spells
-Updated icons for some spells
-Frozen Tomb replaced with Icy Talons: increases iceblock penetration and grants haste and cooldown reduction on damaging a frozen target
-Chill of the Tomb replaced with Corpselight: summons an immobile spirit that launches waves of freezing projectiles at nearby foes
v2.8
-Fixed a bug with Crimson Barrier on certain shader settings
-Frozen Orb has been removed due to implementation issues. It will be added back in some form at a later point
-New Tier 1 Grave spell, Gravespike. Fires a bolt of cold that shatters into a freezing cone behind the target, with a chance to trigger additional ice splinters
-Black Ice has been removed due to balance issues
-New Tier 2 Grave spell, Frozen Tomb. Increases iceblock penetration and gives your cold damage a chance to freeze
-Chill of the Tomb is now the Tier 3 Grave spell
-Hungering Cold deals slightly reduced damage, and now Pins and reduces Stun resistance
-Meta has been removed
-Vampiric Gift has been removed
-Lichform has returned as the Tier 4 Necrosis talent. Now grants Finger of Death ranks based on point investment
-Black Tentacles no longer applies skill failure, now reduces movement speed
-Brittle Bones now has a cap on the damage dealt
-Death Vortex can only restore a maximum of 1 soul per turn
-Many other spells have had their effects, damage and cost rebalanced
v2.7
- Fixed a bug with Crimson Barrier causing lockup if used at the same time as other shield effects
- The Grave tree has been heavily reworked
- New Tier 1 skill, Frozen Orb. Fires a slow moving orb that targets nearby foes with ice shards
- Black Ice now allows you to detonate Frozen Orbs, which inflict cold damage and freeze within radius 3, but increase the cooldown of Frozen Orb by 5 turns
- Chill of the Tomb is now Tier 3. Damage slightly reduced, now inflicts damage instantly rather than as a projectile. Also leaves behind damaging cold flames that spread and freeze
- Hungering Cold no longer freezes unfrozen targets. Instead applies Hypothermia, which pins and cripples. The damage against frozen targets pierces through iceblocks
v2.6
- Improved compatibility with other addons
- Finger of Death deals increased damage
v2.5
- The life bonus from Lichform is now retroactive
- Finger of Death no longer inflicts friendly fire
- Vampirism has been reworked
- Drain Life and Exsanguinate now have a shorter cooldown, duration and deal slightly increased damage
- Drain Life no longer resets cooldown on kill, instead triggers a radius 1 burst dealing the remaining damage to adjacent targets
- Exsanguinate now has a chance to remove beneficial physical effects at talent level 3 and higher
- Blood is Power has been greatly changed. Now provides a boost to all damage dealt at the cost of health drain, and can be stacked up to 3 times, in addition to causing your Drain Life and Exsanguinate to lower Cut and Physical resistance. When reapplied, triggers a radius 6 burst of physical damage that inflicts daze and knockback.
v2.4
- Crimson Barrier is now instant, and will be free to cast if you are below 20% health
- Shades has been heavily reworked
- Black Tentacles now creates a field effect dealing darkness damage and applying skill failure. Each turn there is a chance to summon a Black Tentacle, which can pin and silence foes
- Curse of the Meek has been replaced with Haunting Shades
- Haunting Shades summons multiple shadow clones which taunt nearby foes. On being killed, they will haunt a nearby foe, inflicting darkness damage and reducing damage dealt. Also gives a chance to gain a soul on dying, scaling with talent level
- Duskshroud now grants movement speed and stealth. Each turn a shadow clone will be summoned that blocks foes and fires bolts of confusing, blinding darkness
- Lichform no longer counts as a Necrosis talent
v2.3
- Fixed a bug with Undead Explosion
- Fixed a bug when summoning Bone Giants with Dark Empathy
v2.2
- Dark Empathy now provides a passive increase to minion movement speed
- Assemble guarantees a Runed Bone Giant at TL6
- The direct damage of Shadow Tunnel has been removed
- Affliction Graft is now instant (and so can be used while Confused)
- Devouring Swarm has had it's cooldown reduced, the damage and number of jumps slightly reduced, and can no longer be resisted
- The debuff transfer code used by both talents is now more reliable
- River of Souls now only fires a single bolt at all talent levels, but moves faster, deals more damage and has a wider area
- Death Vortex damage and soul drain chance slightly reduced
- Liches no longer learn Star Fury. Instead all Liches now have the Finger of Death spell, which projects a lethal beam of cold, darkness and physical damage
- Black Ice should now remove particles correctly, and no longer cause performance slowdown
- Fixed a bug with ice beam traps
- Clarified and improved many tooltips
v2.1
-Darkstaff now works correctly
-Fixed a bug with invalid addon hash
v2.0
- Now compatible with ToME 1.2.0
v1.4
- Undead Explosion cooldown increased to 12 turns, Bone Shield duration reduced, and additional effects added for each minion
- Assemble now converts 5 souls directly into a Bone Giant rather than combining minions
- Shadow Tunnel's range and cooldown scales with talent level, and only provides the darkness damage at level 6
- Additional effects added to Essence of the Dead
- Liches now work correctly with Dark Empathy
- Shades now requires class points for all spells
- Cold Flames: Detonate no longer inflicts friendly fire
- Fixed a bug with Cold Flames
- Crimson Barrier now expires when the damage limit is reached
v1.3
- Hungering Cold now uses the correct radius
- Exsanguinate requires points in Crimson Barrier to learn
- Increased the damage slightly on Cold Flames, Drain Life and Exsanguinate
v1.2
- Fixed a bug with Cold Flames: Detonate
v1.1
- Brittle Bones now triggers off all damage types rather than just physical
v1.0
- Meta is now a locked, generic tree available to Necromancers. Note that this will interfere with any Archmage characters you have, so you may want to disable if playing one (or leave it on if you want generic Meta for Archmage too)
- Cold Flames has been entirely reworked. It is now a more straightforward offensive spell that fires an orb that projects cold damage to adjacent targets each turn as it slowly moves forwards. You also learn a second ability that allows you to explode the orb, which freezes, deals additional damage and spreads cold flame patches, at the cost of increasing the cooldown
- Surge of Undeath now provides a small heal over time effect
- Black Ice now deals a % of damage of the initial effect rather than flat damage, and the slow has been slightly reduced
- Essence of the Dead is now instant, and the tooltip has been clarified
- Mummy Lords have been removed
- Husks and Bone Giants no longer inflict friendly fire
- Shadow Tunnel can no longer be used on targets out of your line of sight
v0.3
- Animus Hoarder's minion recovery reduced to 50% of previous value
- Will o' the Wisp now functions correctly
- Black Ice no longer affects friendly targets
- River of Souls no longer drains souls when no targets are available
- River of Souls now fires the correct number of projectiles
- Death Vortex now drains 1 mana per target struck, rather than a flat 1-5 per turn
- While in the Infinite Dungeon, reaching level 20 automatically grants Lichform
v0.2
- Fixed an issue with the level/magic requirements on Corpse and Vampirism

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General Changes

- By default, minions no longer inflict friendly fire to the caster, or to each other. No more having to dance around your skeleton mages until level 12+, and no more having your frontline obliterated by a rogue manathrust. Especially important considering the raw damage potential of the new Wights and Vampires.
- Rather than Star Fury Lich grants you Finger of Death, a dark/phys/cold beam that costs negative energy and has a chance to instakill.
- Staves now have a new type, Darkstaff. This has Cold, Dark, Physical and Arcane damage, so regardless of your build you’ll be able to take advantage of all elements.

Overview of categories

Necromantic Minions
Will o’ the Wisp
Now moved into slot 2 from Grave.
Dark Empathy
Allows your minions to gain a phys/mind/spellcrit bonus equal to a portion of your spellcrit, and increases movement speed.


Grave
Black Ice
A sustain that makes your cold damage against hostile targets apply an effect that slows movement speed and deals periodic damage based on missing health.
Frozen Orb
Fires a slow moving orb that projects cold bolts each turn, and can be detonated to freeze nearby targets.
Hungering Cold
Deals high cold damage in a cone, pinning and crippling targets. If the targets are already frozen, instead deals increased damage.


Vampirism
Drain Life
Siphons blood from the target, causing them to bleed for %0.2f physical damage over 5 turns and healing you for 50% of the damage dealt. If a target dies while their life is being drained, they explode dealing damage equal to the remaining bleed.
Crimson Barrier
Sacrifices 20% of your total health to form a barrier that absorbs damage equal to %d%% of the health cost for 8 turns. While this barrier holds, your healing factor is increased by %d%% and melee attacks against you have a chance for the barrier to retaliate by draining life from the attacker, dealing %0.2f physical damage and healing you for 100% of the damage dealt.
Exsanguinate
Inflicts terrible wounds on targets within a %d radius ball, reducing their healing factor by %d%% and causing them to bleed for %0.2f physical damage over 6 turns. While under this effect, attacks against these targets has a chance to siphon blood from them, healing the attacker for %d%% of the damage dealt. Also strips physical sustains at TL3+.
Blood is Power
You begin converting your own life force into raw magical power, decreasing your life by 1% each turn and increasing all damage dealt. Can be stacked up to 3 times, and when used while already under it's effect triggers a bloodwave dealing physical damage, knockback and daze.


Animus
Animus Hoarder
Gives a chance to regain a soul on minion death.


Advanced Necrotic Minions
Undead Explosion
Now heals you on use, no longer deals friendly fire, causes bone giants to provide the old sacrifice shield, and each minion deals a unique damage type and effect.
Assemble
Now converts 5 souls into a bone giant. Guaranteed runic giant at Tl6.
Shadow Tunnel
Moved from Shades. Can now be targeted and used on enemies.
Advanced Necrotic Minions
All advanced minions now get tactical AI, so they can make use of their abilities in a sensible manner. They deal significantly higher damage in melee, and gain some new abilities:
Vampire - Invoke Darkness, Circle of Death.
Master Vampire - As above, plus Cold Flames.
Dread - Disperse Magic, Silence, on-hit random Gloom.
Grave Wight - Freeze and Phase Door
Barrow Wight - As above, plus Chain Lightning and Flame.


Corpse
Affliction Graft
Tear your afflictions from your flesh and graft them onto a nearby target, transferring up to %d negative physical effects.
At talent level 3, you may also transfer magical effects.
At talent level 5, you may also transfer mental effects.
Devouring Swarm
Sends forth a swarm of undead insects to devour the target, dealing %0.2f physical damage every turn for 3 turns. When this effect ends the swarm will seek out a new target, copying negative physical and magical effects from their original victim. Maximum of %d jumps.
Brittle Bones
Weakens the target's bones, reducing all resistances by %d%%. After 5 turns the target will explode into a shower of bone fragments, dealing %0.2f physical damage in a 3 radius ball, increased by %0.2f for each time they took damage
Corpsewall
Creates a towering wall of flesh and bone of %d length at the target location for 10 turns. The wall is so large that it blocks line of sight, and it will lash out nearby foes with bleeding attacks, diseases and Bone Grasp.


Reaping
River of Souls
Consumes 1 soul each turn to fire a bolt dealing cold/darkness damage in radius 2.
Death Vortex
Empowers your Necrotic Aura, causing it to tear at the souls of your foes. Those inside it will take %0.2f Cold and %0.2f Darkness damage each turn at the cost of 1 mana per target struck. Each time this effect deals damage, you have a %d%% chance to regain a soul.
Reaper’s Mark
Claims the target's soul for 6 turns, causing them to grant you an additional %d souls on death and increase your cold and darkness damage by %d%% for 6 turns. If this effect expires while they still live, they will instead take %0.2f cold and %0.2f darkness damage.
Frostdusk
Moved from Shades, now grants Cold affinity and penetration.


Shades
Black Tentacles
Creates a field of black tentacles that deal shadow damage and inflict a chance for skill failure. Has a chance each turn to summon a larger tentacle that can grapple, pin and silence foes.
Haunting Shades
Summon %d haunting shades that taunt foes. On dying they haunt a nearby foe, dealing darkness damage and reducing damage dealt. Also has a chance to refund a soul on dying.
Duskshroud
Envelop yourself in shadows, increasing movement speed/stealth and spawning a fragile, short duration shade each turn that attacks your foes with blinding/confusing darkness.


Necrosis
Now generic.
Aura Mastery
Moved from Necrotic Minions.
Impending Doom
Now tier 3.

[joebobjoe]

Exsanguinate and Crimson Barrier are both set to require level 4. All the spells in corpse are set to require level 0 except devouring swarm. And it seems odd that Vampiric gift that vampiric gift isn't in the vampire skill tree. Other than that it seems like a good mod and am testing it out now.

[Razakai]

Noted, quick fix so I've uploaded a new version with the correct requirements.
As for Vampiric Gift, I agree that it doesn't feel right. I may replace Blood is Power with it, although I'll need to consider adding another way to provide physical and cut penetration for Vampirism Necromancers. Necrosis will need a new talent too that's useful to all builds, nothing comes to mind at the moment so I'll give it some thought.

[Delmuir]

Well this is interesting… interesting enough to bring me back to the game. I'll play with this for this week. How exciting!

[Zaive]

The duration and cooldown of drain life suggests to me that it's supposed to be able to be cast again as soon as the last cast wears off, but it's possible to hit an enemy with it again while it has 1 turn left, and I think the duration mechanics leaves the duration lower than the cooldown after that, which could mess with the instant cooldown on kill bit.

5/5 animus hoarder is pretty much infinite summons at 97% chance to recover the soul. Considering how summoner necromancers were absolutely terrible at fighting bosses without curse of the meek before, it's pretty nice to have. (And makes the whole "minions are disposable" aspect very true.)

Will o' the wisp doesn't seem to be working... I've seen several minions get killed in the aura and not a single wisp showed up.

Do NOT hit yourself with chill of the tomb with black ice activated. You'll most likely be knocked into ??? hp from the chill of the tomb and then black ice is doing 300% damage to you.

River of souls uses 1 soul per turn even nothing is in sight before deactivating itself. By the wording I thought it would only use souls if it had something to shoot at.

[HousePet]

Very nice. You stole some of my stuff!

[Razakai]

Zaive:

- That's the intent for Drain Life. It's a relatively straightforward bit of code so I think that bug is inherent to Tome. I'll post a bug report and see if it's a known issue.
- Animus Hoarder is pretty cool, but 97% is a little excessive. The intent is less 'infinite summons' and more to make it easier to deal with minion wipes, so I'll probably nerf it to about 10-15% per TL instead. Still makes minions pretty renewable, just not everlasting.
- I think wisp is probably still trying to call the obsolete Grave version, that's an easy fix.
- I'll make Black Ice only apply to hostiles, as hitting yourself with Chill alone is lethal enough. In addition I'm planning on giving Necromancers access to Meta as a locked generic, which will let you happily fire of Chills without worrying about murdering yourself. That should also improve build diversity a bit, as the dispel and cooldown reduction is useful for all Necromancers, especially Cornacs with cat/generics to spare.
- That was actually the intent for RoS, I'll look into the code and see if I can suppress the soul loss if no targets are in sight. I also noticed that currently it's using the wrong value to calculate the number of projectiles, so that'll be fixed too.

I'll upload a new version tonight with some of the easier fixes.

Very nice. You stole some of my stuff!

Necromancy+ (and stuff like Arcanum) is pretty much how I figured out how to code addons (and the reason your name is put at the top of this topic), and stuff like the Undead Explosion, Soulwinds (the soul retrieval part) and Mummy Lord were too good to not reuse! So... retroactive permission to use them?

[HousePet]

Nah, I knew you were going to do it and it was fine all along.

[Reidan]

does lich work in ID as well? different quest status

[Razakai]

does lich work in ID as well? different quest status

Good point, currently Lichform relies on the free point you get from completing the quest. I'll figure out a way to give ID Necromancers the free point at 20.

[Zaive]

I was hoping that river of souls and the next talent only had a cost when they were actually hitting something so I could just leave them up all the time. I guess it's not really bad the way it is now, it just means I can't be lazy about it.

Anyhow, I think the thing with drain life is just a quirk with turn order. Since the turn used to cast it counts as 1 turn for cooldown, your 5th turn comes around again before their 5th meaning you can cast it again before the duration is up. In fact, I believe if you manage to use less than 1 turn to inflict a status effect through speed boosts or instant cast or what not, the enemy will show as having 1 more turn of the effect than the duration states. It's a bit odd that way.

[Razakai]

I was hoping that river of souls and the next talent only had a cost when they were actually hitting something so I could just leave them up all the time. I guess it's not really bad the way it is now, it just means I can't be lazy about it.

Anyhow, I think the thing with drain life is just a quirk with turn order. Since the turn used to cast it counts as 1 turn for cooldown, your 5th turn comes around again before their 5th meaning you can cast it again before the duration is up. In fact, I believe if you manage to use less than 1 turn to inflict a status effect through speed boosts or instant cast or what not, the enemy will show as having 1 more turn of the effect than the duration states. It's a bit odd that way.

On top of the RoS change to only trigger while a mob is in sight, I'll change Death Vortex to drain a flat 1 mana per target struck. More expensive at lower levels, but cheaper at higher levels vs smaller groups, and you can leave it on much like Thunderstorm.

As for Drain Life, that's pretty accurate. To be honest it feels quite strong even without the cooldown reset, so it can stay as-is. The reset was mostly included so you can use it to pick off trash mobs that die in 1-2 turns.

[Doctornull]

Good point, currently Lichform relies on the free point you get from completing the quest. I'll figure out a way to give ID Necromancers the free point at 20.

You may want to look at what Infinite500 does in terms of ID events. There's a "graves" event which recurs and gives rewards / enemies, might be useful to copy that and do something which results in a Lich gift instead of the Cursed Gear tree.

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/3811

v0.3 released.
- Animus Hoarder's minion recovery reduced to 50% of previous value
- Will o' the Wisp now functions correctly
- Black Ice no longer affects friendly targets
- River of Souls no longer drains souls when no targets are available
- River of Souls now fires the correct number of projectiles
- Death Vortex now drains 1 mana per target struck, rather than a flat 1-5 per turn
- While in the Infinite Dungeon, reaching level 20 automatically grants Lichform

[Sradac]

I think you should remove the % chance to regain a soul when death vortex hits an enemy. How am I going to gain a soul from something without killing it? And how do you explain getting multiple souls from multiple enemies? I think the damage thats there is good, maybe swap the % chance to get a soul with % slower global speed might be better.