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

[daed4]

As for the Wild-heart / Wing Pod tree:
1. Buzz-Off
Same problem as rabbi's feet. Non-reliable.
2. Batter
Hahahaha. No.
3. Predator's Stride
4. Flutter
These two look both extremely strong.

[jenx]

Well, I can say that on insane, hydra is VERY hard. Haven't got past level 7 yet on Insane RL.

some feedback so far, having run about 30 or so of these:

1. the hostile patrols on the world map make it instadeath if you run into a patrol early on....please change (this is got to be the dumbest idea I've seen in an addon tbh)
2. I completely don't see the point in repeating the dead boring initial area. it is almost impossible to die here and it achieves nothing - no experience, nothing. please make this a once off. I just go to right edge of screen and wait till it ends. what's the point of this?
3. the generic talent that gives you more heads is red even when you can upgrade it. took me forever to realise why I only ever had one head - thought I couldn't upgrade this talent DUH. FIX pls
4. the (in)compatability of gems/mindstars and hydra heads is driving me completely bonkers - I'm sure there is some pattern, but why on earth is it so opaque and why can't you simply learn this once and then always know it?
5. the unarmed attack mechanism of hydras makes no sense. if i add extra heads I only ever have one unarmed attack on C screen. and I can't work out the attack type, how to improve them etc. am I even supposed to use them?
6. if I don't use drool heads, how am I supposed to survive? the other two are almost useless at low levels on insane. i've played almost every class on insane and few are this weak.
7. the SECOND time on the opening location I tried the SECOND option on the dialogue, i just died. WTF? that makes no sense to me at all. and what's the benefit of leacing equipment on the ground if you're dead in any case?????
8. if you equip a mindstar you get lua error when doing autoexplore, it can be just clsed, but it is super annoying. no other addins
9. I can't figure out what consuming different infusions does - why can't things like this be explained somewhere?

[nsrr]

Well, I can say that on insane, hydra is VERY hard. Haven't got past level 7 yet on Insane RL.

some feedback so far, having run about 30 or so of these:

1. the hostile patrols on the world map make it instadeath if you run into a patrol early on....please change (this is got to be the dumbest idea I've seen in an addon tbh)
2. I completely don't see the point in repeating the dead boring initial area. it is almost impossible to die here and it achieves nothing - no experience, nothing. please make this a once off. I just go to right edge of screen and wait till it ends. what's the point of this?
3. the generic talent that gives you more heads is red even when you can upgrade it. took me forever to realise why I only ever had one head - thought I couldn't upgrade this talent DUH. FIX pls
4. the (in)compatability of gems/mindstars and hydra heads is driving me completely bonkers - I'm sure there is some pattern, but why on earth is it so opaque and why can't you simply learn this once and then always know it?
5. the unarmed attack mechanism of hydras makes no sense. if i add extra heads I only ever have one unarmed attack on C screen. and I can't work out the attack type, how to improve them etc. am I even supposed to use them?
6. if I don't use drool heads, how am I supposed to survive? the other two are almost useless at low levels on insane. i've played almost every class on insane and few are this weak.
7. the SECOND time on the opening location I tried the SECOND option on the dialogue, i just died. WTF? that makes no sense to me at all. and what's the benefit of leacing equipment on the ground if you're dead in any case?????
8. if you equip a mindstar you get lua error when doing autoexplore, it can be just clsed, but it is super annoying. no other addins
9. I can't figure out what consuming different infusions does - why can't things like this be explained somewhere?

0. This add on is balanced toward Normal, and provides a challenge compared to vanilla Normal. You don't have to play on insane, so likely balance concerns you raise while playing insane will be ignored.
1. Go straight to Derth. If you get ambushed before then... well, it's bad luck and unfortunate, but you haven't lost much, have you?
2. Kind of agree on this one. It could at least have fewer NPCs so the turns don't take so long, or something?
3. I... haven't played Hydra since the head requirements were changed, so I can't really say on this one. I know they were explained here in the thread, and I assumed it is in the talent descriptions, as well.
4. They pretty much tell you what type of item they like. Each type of head likes certain types of items. After you figure it out, you will always know it. Aside from head affinity, your chance to clasp is also based on certain stats, as described in the talent description. Remember, this game is a Roguelike; you are expected to learn through a certain amount of trial and error. I couldn't even count the number of things in Vanilla ToME that are not spelled out explicitly.
5. You can definitely used the unarmed attacks. The number of heads that will be used in an attack are based on the number of heads you have active and your Wil and Dex (read the stat descriptions). The attack type is based on equipped items and the type of the head. You are right, though, it is hard to gauge your bump power based on the character sheet; not much info regarding your head attacks there.
6. Again, not balanced for Insane in any way.
7. Well, you won't do it again, will you?
8. This could actually be helpful input. Can you replicate the error and copy it from your log?
9. I... really? When you consume it does exactly what activating it would do, plus gives you an additional passive effect based on the tier. It is explained, quite clearly in the Consume talent description.

[jenx]

Well, I can say that on insane, hydra is VERY hard. Haven't got past level 7 yet on Insane RL.

some feedback so far, having run about 30 or so of these:

1. the hostile patrols on the world map make it instadeath if you run into a patrol early on....please change (this is got to be the dumbest idea I've seen in an addon tbh)
2. I completely don't see the point in repeating the dead boring initial area. it is almost impossible to die here and it achieves nothing - no experience, nothing. please make this a once off. I just go to right edge of screen and wait till it ends. what's the point of this?
3. the generic talent that gives you more heads is red even when you can upgrade it. took me forever to realise why I only ever had one head - thought I couldn't upgrade this talent DUH. FIX pls
4. the (in)compatability of gems/mindstars and hydra heads is driving me completely bonkers - I'm sure there is some pattern, but why on earth is it so opaque and why can't you simply learn this once and then always know it?
5. the unarmed attack mechanism of hydras makes no sense. if i add extra heads I only ever have one unarmed attack on C screen. and I can't work out the attack type, how to improve them etc. am I even supposed to use them?
6. if I don't use drool heads, how am I supposed to survive? the other two are almost useless at low levels on insane. i've played almost every class on insane and few are this weak.
7. the SECOND time on the opening location I tried the SECOND option on the dialogue, i just died. WTF? that makes no sense to me at all. and what's the benefit of leacing equipment on the ground if you're dead in any case?????
8. if you equip a mindstar you get lua error when doing autoexplore, it can be just clsed, but it is super annoying. no other addins
9. I can't figure out what consuming different infusions does - why can't things like this be explained somewhere?

0. This add on is balanced toward Normal, and provides a challenge compared to vanilla Normal. You don't have to play on insane, so likely balance concerns you raise while playing insane will be ignored.
1. Go straight to Derth. If you get ambushed before then... well, it's bad luck and unfortunate, but you haven't lost much, have you?
2. Kind of agree on this one. It could at least have fewer NPCs so the turns don't take so long, or something?
3. I... haven't played Hydra since the head requirements were changed, so I can't really say on this one. I know they were explained here in the thread, and I assumed it is in the talent descriptions, as well.
4. They pretty much tell you what type of item they like. Each type of head likes certain types of items. After you figure it out, you will always know it. Aside from head affinity, your chance to clasp is also based on certain stats, as described in the talent description. Remember, this game is a Roguelike; you are expected to learn through a certain amount of trial and error. I couldn't even count the number of things in Vanilla ToME that are not spelled out explicitly.
5. You can definitely used the unarmed attacks. The number of heads that will be used in an attack are based on the number of heads you have active and your Wil and Dex (read the stat descriptions). The attack type is based on equipped items and the type of the head. You are right, though, it is hard to gauge your bump power based on the character sheet; not much info regarding your head attacks there.
6. Again, not balanced for Insane in any way.
7. Well, you won't do it again, will you?
8. This could actually be helpful input. Can you replicate the error and copy it from your log?
9. I... really? When you consume it does exactly what activating it would do, plus gives you an additional passive effect based on the tier. It is explained, quite clearly in the Consume talent description.

duh - some good tips there nsrr. i am rather impatient with such things.

Anyways, I got to lvl 13 and the hydra started looking much stronger. then of course i got flattened by a rare crystal

[jenx]

sooooo, to mix it up i played a hydra oozemancer, and I have no means of identification that I can find

[nekarcos]

sooooo, to mix it up i played a hydra oozemancer, and I have no means of identification that I can find

... Okay, I'm actually EXTREMELY glad you pointed that out. I just realized Monstrosities don't get a Scrying Orb!

[nekarcos]

@daed4
"Buzz-Off" is NOT supposed to be reliable. It's the "I want to be ANYWHERE except where I'm currently standing" talent, and you can put more talent points into it if you want a little added security.
"Batter" is great for closing a gap (wait until late game), but it used to be better before I buffed "Blood Heat". Originally, both effects ONLY triggered when they were inflicted on YOU (you had to make yourself bleed/burn somehow to get the benefits). I ended up tweaking the effect when I found myself purposely using "Batter" just to make myself start bleeding...
"Predator's Stride"... I'm glad you have no comment. It's absurdly good.
"Flutter"... Admittedly, I haven't really tried it out myself

Well, I can say that on insane, hydra is VERY hard. Haven't got past level 7 yet on Insane RL.

some feedback so far, having run about 30 or so of these:

1. the hostile patrols on the world map make it instadeath if you run into a patrol early on....please change (this is got to be the dumbest idea I've seen in an addon tbh)
2. I completely don't see the point in repeating the dead boring initial area. it is almost impossible to die here and it achieves nothing - no experience, nothing. please make this a once off. I just go to right edge of screen and wait till it ends. what's the point of this?
3. the generic talent that gives you more heads is red even when you can upgrade it. took me forever to realise why I only ever had one head - thought I couldn't upgrade this talent DUH. FIX pls
4. the (in)compatability of gems/mindstars and hydra heads is driving me completely bonkers - I'm sure there is some pattern, but why on earth is it so opaque and why can't you simply learn this once and then always know it?
5. the unarmed attack mechanism of hydras makes no sense. if i add extra heads I only ever have one unarmed attack on C screen. and I can't work out the attack type, how to improve them etc. am I even supposed to use them?
6. if I don't use drool heads, how am I supposed to survive? the other two are almost useless at low levels on insane. i've played almost every class on insane and few are this weak.
7. the SECOND time on the opening location I tried the SECOND option on the dialogue, i just died. WTF? that makes no sense to me at all. and what's the benefit of leacing equipment on the ground if you're dead in any case?????
8. if you equip a mindstar you get lua error when doing autoexplore, it can be just clsed, but it is super annoying. no other addins
9. I can't figure out what consuming different infusions does - why can't things like this be explained somewhere?

Also, my turn to input on this:

0. I'm actually glad you tested this on Insane. You have confirmed that this add-on is horribly imbalanced when played on higher difficulties. Alas, I still have NO intention of balancing it towards such.
1. *shrugs* Being totally honest, there's no "easy" way for me to prevent that bit of RNG. That's just how ToME's "Wilderness" zone works
2. ... Dramatic intro? Actually, you get a small bit of exp from this-- But maybe I should find a way to make this sequence a little more meaningful then
3. I was afraid this might be a little confusing to players...
4.
5. I would like to make your number of heads a little more evident, but the truth is... I haven't really figured out how to do "Character Sheet" shenanigans yet, so these mechanics (like head damage) are going to be a little bit invisible. Please bear with this!
6. Admittedly, a pure "Glare Hydra" run was absolute hell for me early game
7. What's that? You gave up on living?? No wonder you died.
8. It might have something to do with a "Clasp Discomfort" expiring and attempting to auto-equip. Definitely something that needs investigation, but I need the situation to be replicated to apply a "surgical" solution.
9. Time for some reading. You have no place playing a Roguelike if you can't sit down and nerd out a bit

[nekarcos]

"Odyssey of The Summoner" has been updated!! (Version 0.2.5)

*** Version: 0.2.5 ~ "-- Stiiill buffin'! "

[General]
(BUFFS)
- "Natural Combat" activated effects now have a 16 turn cooldown (from 20)
- "Rabbit's Foot" will now remove up to 3 effects at 90 Wild Power (from 100)

(BUGS)
- Fixed an error where the incorrect message displays when clasping an item.
- Temporarily disabling "Reshape" option in inventory menu until it can be made to work properly.
- A mistake with "Natural Combat" activated effects allowed the player to remove these early. Now they are considered as detrimental effects and cannot be removed early.
- Corrected an issue when attempting to enter the Rich Merchant's house.

[Ritch]
(BUFFS)
- "Blood Feast" now triggers off of damaging Disease and Fire effects as well, but Bleeding effects will provide twice the effect.
- "Blood Feast" now provides "5.7%" at Talent Level 1 (from 3.7%), nearly doubling its effect.
- In response to the former changes, "Blood Feast's" potency has been halved.
*** I'm leaving the rest of the tree alone because, thanks to Guillotine, you have no excuse NOT to cause a bleed effect
- Threshold for "Macabre End" Overkills are now somewhat lower (to allow early-game Ritch to get some horrifying kills!)

(NERFS)
- Potency of "Macabre End" Overkills has been slightly lowered (since overkills are now easier to trigger)

(BUGS)
- Tweaked the behavior of "Scrap". The log now displays the exact Durability loss of each weapon
- "Scrap" now has a counter describing how many hits it has left (I could swear I did this...)
- Tweaked the positioning of item descriptions on doll for Head and Mouth slot. Does it look alright now?
- Removed incorrect text about Flamespit being a ranged attack that misses
- Removed incorrect text about synergy between "Open Veins" and "Laceration"
- "Cold Blood" is no longer marked as a Level 10 tree. (ty "Lieutenant Germz")
- The "Overkill" effect of "Macabre End" is now slightly less pronounced.
- Fixed a bug where Flamespit would not trigger Fire Pods.

NOTICE
*** The NEXT update is going to be a MINOR VERSION UPDATE.
*** "Minor Version" updates are not guaranteed to have compatibility, and I will not attempt to create any. I STRONGLY insist you do not play or report bugs with characters from older minor versions. As such, please wrap up your current runs. The target date will be July 27!
*** It will include the following:
- "Consume" will have a new ID tag. Old versions will not be compatible with this talent anymore.
- I will be experimenting with making "Life Regen" a passive effect of having Wild Power. "Lick Wounds" will have a new effect.
- Ritch's "Cold Blood" tree will become unlocked, while "Hoarding Beast" will become locked.
- Ritch's "Bloodletting Beast" tree will become unlocked, while "Wing Pod" will become locked.
- As my experiment has proven, "Burrowing Beast" is simply too powerful to have as a birth unlock. As such, it will no longer be a birth-locked category anymore. Those who have already have it will still have it, but otherwise, you will not find it locked at birth anymore.
- Moving "Guillotine" back to being the 4th talent, now that "Bloodletting Beast" is extremely accessible.

[nsrr]

What has fourteen heads, twelve mindstars, and no thumbs?

This guy: http://imgur.com/a/WlJRX

Mostly I wanted to give you a visual on the Hydra paper doll. The position for the short description for some of the jaw slots are off a bit.

[nekarcos]

@nsrr
Fixed it-- More clumsy coding on my part.
You sure are good at spotting these things out

Also, a thought: I have been juggling the idea of having The Summoner teach Avatars the "Mindstar Combat" talent tree, much like the trainer in Zigur (since that place is currently... ahem-- "off-limits" )
I have mostly hesitated about the idea because you need 2 Mindstars for pretty much ALL the talents, and only the Hydra can use more than one at once.
I guess the reason I brought this up... Expect Mindstars to gain a "unique" purpose to Avatars, as this was in my original design, but I simply never got around to "implementing" it.

[daed4]

I now fear for a hydra with 14 mindstars all of them bladed.

Also I agree that the description of what each head can take are cryptic as -. And I still don't know what the mechahead does!

[jenx]

so, looking at the code, I can't see many talents that can crit. Am I reading this wrong?

[jenx]

Planning these characters is very difficult because the talents don't tell you for the most part what they scale off.

Some I have learned only scale of talent point allocation , generally an inferior design approach. The prudence tree is like this ans so I"m reticent to invest in it. I'm already getting things like 0.18 healing per turn recovery...LOL.

Can you please add "X scales with your mindpower/spellpower/accuracy/etc" to each talent where that applies. and if crit is possible, please state this too.

The fourth talent on hoarding gives really bizarre numbers. I had +50 armour with only 3/3/1/1 point allocation at level 13. Nice, but imagine what it will be at higher levels! It suggests 2 points per item for armour, and then you drop in a randart shield and it will jump by 20-30 points, just with t1 items....

[nekarcos]

@jenx
*** DOES everything need to scale, though?
Things like "Recuperate" definitely don't need to scale off of anything because they already scale horrifyingly with... Well, general ability to live (such as armor, damage reduction, etc...)

*** Damage scaling...?
I'll admit-- I was a bit lazy about describing what most things scale off of (or whether they can crit), so I might have missed a few talents here and there. However, most talents DON'T scale on anything, mainly because it's too soon to start enforcing specific stat builds on Avatars yet. Here and there, you might see "scales on physical", "scales on mindpower", "scales on strength" etc... But for the most part, things don't scale on anything for the sake of freedom.

*** Problems?
In any case, if you want something fixed, you must describe what it is in detail or you WILL go ignored. You mentioned that a lot of talents don't scale or don't crit... Which ones specifically?

*** "Treasure Hoarder's Will" Talent
"Treasure Hoarder's Will" gets SIGNIFICANT power bonuses from heavy, valuable objects. It's honestly not surprising that you got 20-30 Armor just from eating a Random-Artifact Tier 1 shield... Though, I'll admit: That might be a bit much considering what it is.
With that said, this talent is still in testing, and, personally, I think it's low-key OP...

*** "Prudence" talent tree
This is a super new talent tree. It was added to Hydra to give players an alternate means of being tanky: "Prevention", not "Reparation". It would be nice if someone tried it out and told me how it felt to use

[Stuntofthelitter]

I was sent a save to repair that was unable to use the portal in Eruan to start the Charred Scar event. Eventually figured out that the orb_portal table for the tile has a special function, from your addon.

It seems your code in replacements.lua:206 breaks the portal, at least for those who are not playing a summoner or the like but just have the addon active.