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

[jenx]

drakelings are getting lost a lot more with latest update. they get stuck on map and stay there till I leave the level

[nekarcos]

@Tinyshockwave
RE: Glare Hydra is feeling wimpy...
A thought...
... What if "Stare Down" was extra-difficult to maintain, had a shorter duration, had a higher equilibrium cost...

... But victims under a "Stare Down" effect would no longer cooldown talents...? This would mean if you managed to maintain a stare long enough, the victim would eventually become brainlocked to the point of being unable to do anything-- Like an anaconda constricting its victim to death. It would become a VERY powerful tool, and would reward players who use slow, patient methods of defeating powerful opponents-- VERY befitting of the "Clever Hydra" theme.

-- One more thing (thinking this over again), maybe I will make "Stare Down" less random, and each stare-down effect will instead be a "tier" of stackage-- For example, "Dread" is 1 gaze, "Terror" is 2 gazes, etc...

Give me your thoughts!


RE: 4 gazes, 3 heads?!
I decided to let this slide. That, and it would just be VERY messy to "decide" which gaze would be broken (confusing for the player too). Easier solution is to let it be.

RE: Never give up
... You don't expect to win, or you don't expect to not-encounter a game-breaking bug?
Hahaha... You worded that pretty unfortunately!



@jenx
RE: Drakelings are still dumb?!
Are you sure? Even now that they have A* pathfinding...??

Uh-oh... Wait a minute. I just realized something... I FORGOT TO UPDATE ALL THE OLD DRAKELING AIS! Only NEW Drakelings have the correct AI!! WHOOPS!!!

ANYBODY who was doing a Fire Drake run BEFORE the recent update... Your Drakelings' AIs weren't updated-- So my patch notes might have been A BIT misleading... SORRY!! My bad!!

[jenx]

This was all new drakelings. I started afresh.

[jenx]

Backdraft doesn't scale with any stat - str, dex, or wil. So it becomes useless as you progress through the game to higher levels.

[nekarcos]

Backdraft doesn't scale with any stat - str, dex, or wil. So it becomes useless as you progress through the game to higher levels.

I wouldn't call a stun/knockback/protection/positioning/<the list goes on if you use your imagination> talent "useless" at ANY point-- Especially since it can now be double-casted when paired with "Glide".

... Though, you might be right about the damage. Maybe it needs to scale on something, just a TINY bit.

[Tinyshockwave]

@Tinyshockwave
RE: Glare Hydra is feeling wimpy...
A thought...
... What if "Stare Down" was extra-difficult to maintain, had a shorter duration, had a higher equilibrium cost...

... But victims under a "Stare Down" effect would no longer cooldown talents...? This would mean if you managed to maintain a stare long enough, the victim would eventually become brainlocked to the point of being unable to do anything-- Like an anaconda constricting its victim to death. It would become a VERY powerful tool, and would reward players who use slow, patient methods of defeating powerful opponents-- VERY befitting of the "Clever Hydra" theme.

-- One more thing (thinking this over again), maybe I will make "Stare Down" less random, and each stare-down effect will instead be a "tier" of stackage-- For example, "Dread" is 1 gaze, "Terror" is 2 gazes, etc...

Hm, Both of these ideas sound interesting.
"Brainlock" Stare Down- As it is, once something has all four gazes on them they are pretty helpless, only a lucky teleport out of sight or something similar can save them. Now, if it had less duration, but brain locked as a bonus, I think the ultimate effect would be very similar, but with steeper costs can less raw cc, just more restricted talents. With steeper equilibrium costs it's possible it could end up worse, but that's, I would think, easily changed for balance. "Clever" already has some struggle with equilibrium, needing to spam breath rotations many times to kill anything strong. One thing that would differentiate this change is if the gazes had a shorter cool down. That would make up for a shorter duration and higher cost. On the other hand, if the result is similar the cost/cooldown/duration changes could be their own thing. I dunno, I'm wandering at this point.

The consistent stare down could certainly make the talent more strategic. The order would be important to usefulness. Like you mentioned, Dread could be the best choice for the first gaze, because of it's consistency. If I want gazes on four different things, less randomness is nice. Doom is currently like this, for the last spot, I actually only just noticed. The question is, how useful is lowered mind resistance once four fears are stacked on them? Incite Death's brain death is easier to use, but all bosses and stronger enemies have immunity to it anyways. It would help with hallucinations, but that's meant for crowds and works plenty well enough anyways because most enemies don't have good mind save. It wouldn't make a good first gaze, not much point to spreading it out, and second slot feels... awkward to me. I don't really know what to do with Doom. Despair, on the other hand, is really powerful. It might have the lowest chance of activating, but when it does the confusion lasts two or three turns at least, and by then there is a good chance it has been reapplied, leading to a chain of cc. What opportunities the enemy actually gets is taken care of by the rest of the stairs. Now, it's possible that this is just the most visible effect and more confirmation bias than actual use, but confusion is a strong effect. Also worth pointing out that, assuming the confusion still checks against mental save, this might be the best use of Doom. Terror is also good, maybe as good as Despair. A pretty high chance to lose a turn is great. I will have pay closer attention to to which of these is doing the real work in a fight.
- side note- I'm no expert on Tome's coding, but I do know other coding, and I would expect this change would be harder to code. Right now the buffs are all separate, but if Dread and Despair are on something, and dread runs out, does despair become dread because they only have one stare? Or does it stay anyways? This might have to become a debuff version of cursed's curses, where each head increases the value on a debuff with a list of staking effects. Again, I don't entirely know what I'm talking about here, just where my thoughts went.

In summary, both changes could be good. The first one might not have a lot of actual game play change, however, so personally I am partial to the second. Both of them together sounds bad though, trying to stack fears with higher costs and shorter duration sounds conflicting.

Also quick question, Menace mentions staking up to 5. Does this include Incite Death's stun? Or maybe Voracious feast? Just wonder where the other fear comes from.

@Tinyshockwave
... You don't expect to win, or you don't expect to not-encounter a game-breaking bug?
Hahaha... You worded that pretty unfortunately!

I don't expect any major bugs! I have some faith in you!


Something that I forgot to put in my last post, I had a TON of Cunning. If I maxed Cunning, and underdog, with will and con maxed too, I would have an ABSURD amount of cunning, which could be really great, but nothing major scales with it. Sure, the "clever" trees need it, but they don't scale with it. The Hydra racial tree scales with it, but has limited usefulness. Ideally I will never be in range to use slyness, that just how I play this build. Feels more like a feral hydra build talent, letting it ignore armor and defense. Cruel elation is great, certainly the best use of cunning. Sadistic Calm would be good, but all I have to make use of it is the poison breath. Are globs effected by it? that could make them better.

As long as I'm doing some theory crafting here, I did have an idea for how to help this. Disclaimer: my ideas would be relatively large changes, I'm just tossing stuff around and seeing what sticks
Anyways, what if there were bonuses for being "In your Element" that scaled of cunning? Something like you mentioned before with Mist lurker reducing damage, but it could be more than that. What about dealing bonus damage to enemies in the mist with you? Or having high effective mind power against someone in the mist. This could go for swamp beast too, giving Beneath the Wake more bonuses. If you really wanted to get crazy with the changes, it could be a skill in the hydra racial tree, since the tree already appears geared to strategic play. The downside here is this means built in synergy between specific trees and would probably have to replace an existing skill. The upside would be a great reason to stack cunning, and more reason to use the hydra racial tree. Just some ideas.

[tabs]

Playing a Hydra on normal/adventure. Have defeated the Master and am about to head East (or at least that's what I presume will happen).

• My build is pretty straightforward relying on breaths (Hydra Toxin + Triad of Threes has nice synergy) but increasingly more on bumps (about 500 dpt).
• I cheesed a bit with Select Your Escorts to get 8 loremaster escorts. That plus a cat point has me at 1.6 Natural Combat mastery.
• Got Bloodcaller from the Arena area and it procs regularly on breaths/bumps; that together with Hungry Eyes (First Dicipline) takes care of healing.
• So far I kill everything quickly enough to avoid status effects, but I foresee them becoming a big hurdle.
• Max out Lick Wounds just recently and likely will max Hungry Eyes (for critmult) and Nature Hardended (for Hardiness) next.

All in all I'm feeling pretty powerful and optimistic about the East. If anything, though, ToME has taught me that such feelings often come before brutal, embarrassing deaths.

Some ideas/thoughts:

• I noticed all head attacks scale of wildpower/str/dex. Str seems like an odd choice for Hydra since no talents use it. Perhaps have each head scale of a different stat in combo with wildpower?
• I don't get how Relief is supposed to work. It says I should be able to select an item but I don't get a popup or anything when I sustain it.
• The Hydragon talents don't really give me a good reason to go beyond 4/4/4/1 yet. The bonus for the 5th point is hit hard by diminishing returns. As my "heads per attack" breaks 13 I suppose I'll need to put points in Decoy.
• Does the Regenerate tree benefit from healmod? I couldn't tell when I tested them and the heal values seemed very very low. I get way more from Bloodcaller procs.
• This may or may not be a problem, but I don't see a good reason to invest in the Serpent or Regenerate trees at all. Every point in them is 1 less wildpower exchanged for pretty mediocre benefits.
• I think Prudence is good though: 1st talent is gives nice flat reduction at low levels. 2nd is great vs bosses/rares/uniques. 3rd is meh. 4th is good healing.

[nekarcos]

@Tinyshockwave
RE: Stare Down nerfs?
Nah. I guess it doesn't need any MORE difficulty, huh?

RE: Stare-Tiering
It would work PRECISELY like "Curses" in the "Cursed" class-- Something like this:

1 Stare ~ "Dread" (lower damage)
2 Stares ~ "Terror" (talent failure chance)
3 Stares ~ "Despair" (chance of becoming confused each turn)
4 Stares ~ "Doom" (lowered mind resistance)

I haven't thought this out thoroughly though, so I honestly don't know how I would managed "Stares" being removed and such. Let's give this idea a little bit more time to fulminate (before attempting some big overhaul)!

RE: "Cunning" scaling...?
"Cunning" is VERY useful mainly for "Clasping" objects-- Which is Hydra's main source of power/utility. No, Hydra doesn't gain any significant damage bonuses from it-- But it DOES gain the ability to (typically) wear VERY nifty equipment-- So I can't really give it more uses for Cunning beyond learning the "clever" talent trees without handing it too much power already...

I've got an idea for what I might do with "Cunning", however... As usual, I'll leave something big like this as a surprise for the next update.


RE: Clever is too expensive
The solution might not exactly be "lower equilibrium costs", but "longer durations". Personally, I feel refreshing "Mist Shroud" is a bit tedious-- This, and the idea is that you're "claiming" territory as your own. If it lasted longer, you'd get more bang for your buck. Same with several other "Clever" talents-- But I'd like to see how everyone else feels before going through with a change.

RE: Mind Resistance
... Uhhh, "Mind Resistance"... Not "Mental Save"!

It means "Sordid Howl" and other Mind-type damage hurts them SIGNIFICANTLY more-- Especially those with high mind resistance (since its a FLAT reduction, not percentage!)

RE: Stacking confusion?
I'm pretty certain the confusion is not supposed to "refresh" itself unless they become UN-confused... I might have to check into that.

RE: Is "Incite Death" a fear?
YES. VERY, very YES! One of the BEST suppression tactics on Hydra is "Menace" + "Incite Death". Because "Incite Death" is semi-irresistible (ALWAYS works somewhat), it essentially stops the whole world perfectly dead. Also, here's a fun fact: Did you know talents with no energy requirement ("0% Turn") absolutely CANNOT have equilibrium failures...? This means using "Incite Death" to slow down a messy fight is a VERY reliable tactic (and hence, the enormous cooldown).




@tabs
Glad to hear some happy stories now and not so many horror ones!

RE: Escort Scumming
... Not gonna lie... Before I bought the game, I used to scum escorts ALL the time by copy-pasting my save file. Escorts always felt like randomized freebie points-- But freebies that were being dangled precariously on the tip of a flag pole-- Liable to blow over from any whimsical breeze and break.
But, errr... Poetry aside-- ESCORTS ARE LAME AND I DON'T BLAME YOU FOR "SIMPLIFYING" THEM.

RE: Bloodcaller
"Bloodcaller" is the MAIN reason I've always been afraid to improve Avatar's healing capabilities too much. Considering that "Hoarding Beast" is available to EVERY Avatar, and it literally provides you exactly ONE slot that is PERFECT for holding it, I expected people to discover (and utilize) it MUCH faster-- But I never heard a thing about it... Until recently. Left me kinda... Bewildered, really...

RE: Brutal, Embarrassing deaths
Don't make the same mistake I ALWAYS do in ToME-- Fight "your clone" FIRST if you plan to get the Draconic Body prodigy...

RE: Head scaling
The idea was to "match" the scaling of standard, unarmed "punch" attacks from humans.
However... I never did expect people to choose "Strength" over other stats like "Constitution" or "Willpower", since the former is related to your overall well-being and the latter allows you to even USE 80% of your talents. In fact, this is USUALLY the case for ALL the Avatars. As such, I wanted to reward players for making this DARING trade-off by giving them a nice healthy damage boost to their standard attacks. "Dexterity" gives less because it's already associated with the number of times you attack-- And thus, your damage output (this also means you could pump 100 Dexterity and still get a decent return on damage!)

RE: Relief
... Once again, this talent proceeds to be a source of problems for both me AND players. Let me tell you a story-- Errr, a SHORT one this time.

Once upon a time, Avatars DIDN'T get a talent called "Gluttony", and the ONLY way to upchuck objects was through THIS talent: "Relief". However, right at the last moment (about a week before release), I canned the idea and added "Gluttony" because I discovered VARIOUS ways to "break" the character and the talent due to encumbrance. Ever since then, Relief sits alone, wondering why nobody is really interested in talking to it anymore. Little did "Relief" know-- Its role was usurped-- And I'm none too proud about it...

I think every day about how I could make the inventory management of "Stomach" remain frustrating and inhibiting-- But WITHOUT being tedious and unnecessary. Before the "Gluttony" change, I would turn on "Relief", then run back and forth for 400 turns until I got a prompt to spit out ONE item. I think you can understand why it works the way it does now, right...?

Nevertheless though... "Relief" needs a new role-- And I'm still trying to think of one that thematically fits the idea of "using treasure as protection".


RE: Why do 5 in Hydragon?
Hmmm... Why indeed? Saves seem so worthless ever since nsrr enlightened me... (I would link you, but I'm having trouble finding the exact post)
You bring up an interesting point though-- What if this bonus was applied AFTER diminishing returns...? I wonder if that would give it a little more appeal...

RE: Decoy Heads
I think the "Defense" bonuses it gives are worth it-- And Decoy heads DO protect your current heads. Can't go wrong, really.

RE: Recuperation + Healing Mod?
As of current, Healing Mod DOES NOT affect Recuperation effects due to the currently applied "Volatile" change. However, in return, "Recuperate" gives twice as much healing (from 40% to 80%).

Do you think this is disagreeable? That's the whole point of these Volatile changes after all! I want some evaluation-- Good or bad tweak? Too extreme or not enough?

RE: Why bother "Ego/Serpent"?
It's a racial tree and is totally independent of the working order of Hydra itself. In regard to Hydra though, the only real reason to start investing into it is if you plan to branch into a "Cunning" talent tree. Otherwise, "Sadistic Calm" adds tons of damage to poison, and "Cruel Elation" is AWESOME when paired with "Glare Hydra" talents.

RE: Prudence is cool!
No joke-- The whole reason this tree exists is because of the first talent. After extensive Hydra testing, it got rather tiresome being UTTERLY MELTED by Snowy Wolves and "Glimmering Vampires". After dawning a "Crown of Eternal Nights", I marveled at how quickly all of those "Retaliation" woes... Disappeared!
Gears started turning, and I realized: "Hydra needs an INNATE way of FLATLY reducing damage it takes"-- But that would be OP-- BRAWLER levels of OP-- Oh god. So, I gave it a very simple, clever limitation: It ONLY works when you're in the middle of an attack-- Essentially, it's "anti-retaliation".

So, it WAS going to be a "Natural Combat" talent-- But then I realized it doesn't suit the theme of "improving parameters"-- No. It just, flat out, gave you unique, non-ToME properties. So, this lead me to a dreadful conclusion: "... This talent needs its own talent tree"...

... So then, I just needed 3 other talents that followed this theme and suited that purpose-- The rest is history as you know it. Personally, I'm just glad "Prudence" is generally so well-received! It was EASILY my most half-assed talent tree (both in artwork and mechanics)-- Though, I've always heard there is beauty in simplicity, huh?

Anywho-- Keep giving me feedback about Prudence-- It's a topic of MUCH interest for me, since it has underwent the absolute LEAST testing (0 field-testing, in fact).





PS: I've done some thinking over and I think it's UNFAIR (and also BAD for testing) to force EVERYBODY into a set of experimental circumstances and changes. That is to say, I'm thinking of placing "Volatile" changes into a SEPARATE add-on, such that one could simply activate/deactivate the Volatile Changes add-on to their liking.
However, I do not take lightly the idea of creating NEW add-ons for the sake of supplementing an already existing one. I'm still giving this a lot of thought...

[daed4]

PS: I've done some thinking over and I think it's UNFAIR (and also BAD for testing) to force EVERYBODY into a set of experimental circumstances and changes. That is to say, I'm thinking of placing "Volatile" changes into a SEPARATE add-on, such that one could simply activate/deactivate the Volatile Changes add-on to their liking.
However, I do not take lightly the idea of creating NEW add-ons for the sake of supplementing an already existing one. I'm still giving this a lot of thought...

Wouldn't be easier to add it as an ingame option?

See nullpack.

[nekarcos]

PS: I've done some thinking over and I think it's UNFAIR (and also BAD for testing) to force EVERYBODY into a set of experimental circumstances and changes. That is to say, I'm thinking of placing "Volatile" changes into a SEPARATE add-on, such that one could simply activate/deactivate the Volatile Changes add-on to their liking.
However, I do not take lightly the idea of creating NEW add-ons for the sake of supplementing an already existing one. I'm still giving this a lot of thought...

Wouldn't be easier to add it as an ingame option?

Not quite.

Not every Volatile change is going to be simple enough that "pushing a button" will undo its influence. It might be things like "Your character starts with X category points" or "you now start in Reknor"-- Which also happens to be things you can't really "turn on/off" by the time you're already in the game.

Basically, the ruleset Volatile changes cause need to be enforced from the moment the player creates the character, and stuck with THAT character until the day that character dies (MUCH like how add-ons work right now). This is why it comes to mind to do it through a separate add-ons, where it could (somewhat effortlessly) be toggled and I would easily be able to locate any characters using the Volatile Changes pack in the vault.

[tabs]

Tooltip for my Orb of the Self says "When wielded/worn: +10 LCK" shouldn't that be "When carried"?

[nekarcos]

Tooltip for my Orb of the Self says "When wielded/worn: +10 LCK" shouldn't that be "When carried"?

It means what it means-- If you wear it, you'll get an extra +10 Luck.

[daed4]

Not quite.

Not every Volatile change is going to be simple enough that "pushing a button" will undo its influence. It might be things like "Your character starts with X category points" or "you now start in Reknor"-- Which also happens to be things you can't really "turn on/off" by the time you're already in the game.

Basically, the ruleset Volatile changes cause need to be enforced from the moment the player creates the character, and stuck with THAT character until the day that character dies (MUCH like how add-ons work right now). This is why it comes to mind to do it through a separate add-ons, where it could (somewhat effortlessly) be toggled and I would easily be able to locate any characters using the Volatile Changes pack in the vault.

I meant that you activate it like Nullpack's changes (IE-> Options, change X and activates next play-through). Although the rest are valid points, I just dislike the addon because I have like 10+ and there is no searcher ingame.

This said: Reknor start when?

[Gottschkopf]

This said: Reknor start when?

I think this was just an example, not a real planned feature...

[nekarcos]

This said: Reknor start when?

I think this was just an example, not a real planned feature...

That's where you're wrong.

I won't even lie-- I HAVE, actually, planned to allow ANY race to play as Avatars at some point, and was going to create special branches for the first quest depending on each race that would lead them to a different starting area (instead of Derth/Trollmire/Korpul). This, by extension, means that if you played as a Dwarf/Hydra, you might have a starting quest that leads you back to The Iron Throne (and towards "Reknor" somewhat).
At current though, I only have the "default" questline, which is what would occur if you're playing as an "unrecognized" race.

... But here I am being a bit loud-mouthed again, huh? Hahaha...