Dark Priest v3.1.1 aka Fear the Darkane Magicks

[Toles of Maine Exits]

On some tile sets (Scintillating Caves, for example), there's no visual indicator of lit or unlit at all. On other tile sets, there is, but even when there is the tiles that are directly adjacent to my character appear lit, even if they aren't. The only way I can tell in these situations is via mouseover.

I don't think this is really your fault (lit and unlit tiles have always behaved this way), but your add on is the only reason it matters. It make effectively using "Unseen" a bit of a chore. Is there some setting I need to change? Or would it be possible to make a more obvious and consistent graphical indicator of which tiles are lit and which aren't?

This is something I noticed as well, and it is definitely unfortunate. I found myself having to mouse over tiles on occasion to check their Lit status, and it can be kind of a chore. Addressing this would be beyond my current skill level, and I can't think of an elegant solution that would be within my power. I could potentially add a map effect of some sort, though I'm pretty shaky on those, and I would only be able to do it for tiles that were unlit by your Aura, not tiles that are already unlit, and I'm not sure I would be able to have the effect cleared by things that would re-light the tiles (e.g. Sun Infusions).

I did not realize that some tile sets that have no visual indication whatsoever (although I did anticipate there might be problems in places with the 'star-field' back ground). If the graphics are just swapping between a 'lit' and 'unlit' tile graphic, and some tile sets are just lacking the alternates, that could potentially be solved by creating some shaded versions of the tiles and overloading them into the set.

I'll see what I can do, but I can't promise that this is something I will be able to find a solution for quickly, or at all :/

For the non-cooperative backgrounds, would it work to actually make the unlit tiles look lighter? maybe a very mute yellow?

Completely random idea- what if dark priests' staff talents worked with tridents too? I think it fits thematically if contextualized as a pitchfork (tridents are basically staffs with a fork on the end anyway), and it might help distinguish this class from other melee-casters.

That's a thought. Though, when I think of pitchforks, I think of the angry mobs that would be trying (and utterly failing) to stop the Dark Priest, rather than the Priests themselves

In a lot of Christian imagery, the devil carries a pitchfork and his demons are prodding damned souls into hell with them, so that was my reasoning. Also, (other than the steamsaws) I can't think of a weapon in ToME that would cause more pain. The wound would be harder to treat and would be shallower than a sword or axe because there's only so much of the length that could be impaled into the enemy, so the death would almost necessarily be more drawn out, giving the Dark Priest more time to utterly crush the will and soul of his victim before their demise.

(Completely random and VERY GRAPHIC story incoming)
Just imagine your character pacing around the broken form of the Assassin Lord, having dispatched his allies already, and espousing the Good Word of Pain before bashing his withered, unhealed midsection with the blunt end of your trident. The crumpled foe cries out a stream of curses that turn into wimpers as you lean into the trident, slowly pushing it down until you feel it hit stone. "Kill me.. Please.." he manages to wheeze. You cackle as you wrench your weapon and swing the rot clinging to it from his body from the end, splashing some onto his face in the process. "So you finally see IT, don't you? Your precious god of money means nothing, never has."
You stab the decapitated head of one of his minions with your trident and wave it in front of his face, magically moving it's mouth as you speak. "The only reality is suffering and death. I would have accepted it long ago had I not been blessed enough to deliver it to others." You move the head to his chest and send a surge of energy to it, causing the mouth to violently unhinge and SNAP shut, tearing through armor and flesh alike. His eyes, previously clouded, snap to attention as he shrieks and you continue. "SING! You wanted death so cry out.. CALL FOR IT!" Another pulse. SNAP! Felt like that one got a rib. "YOU WILL NEVER FEEL THIS ALIVE SO SING!!!" Pulse. SNAP! more ribs, and his cries are fading so we must be at least partially into the lungs. "Want for the loving embrace of nothingness, for to know that divine release is to know all. I only wish I could join you right now my son, but my mission is not yet ended."
Pulse.
SNAP!
His whimpering ceases, as does his breathing. You draw your trident away to see the mangled heart of the once proud assassin lord clutched between the teeth of the head at its' end. You place your foot against it and push it off your weapon after a moment of admiring your most creative kill yet. You look for the kidnapped merchant to show him the way, but he wisely made his escape while you were busy. You sigh as you imagine what a wealthy merchant's family would look like when shown the Good Word, and head off to Last Hope to look for the next Good Kill, knowing there's few other places a wealthy human salesman would live.

Ominous, huh? On a side note, I would possibly be interested in writing more if you're interested in tweaking the quest to fit your class (it doesn't make sense for a dark priest like this to save ANYONE to me). I'll change the trident parts if you don't feel like I do, and if you think it's TOO graphic I completely understand and could easily tone that down a decent amount without completely changing it. Well, maybe not easily, but I have the time

[echo42]

what the hell dude don't try to shoehorn your snuff fanfic into this

[nsrr]

Sigh... I hate to say it, but Wicked Fervor was still broken. That underscore was missing in more places than I realized, even after looking for it specifically. The crit mod was not being removed when the sustain was deactivated, causing it to stack infinitely if you turned it off and on. It's fixed now (knock on wood). I would swear that it's been thoroughly tested, but I thought it was before, too, and look where that got me...

I will try to not have any more updates so soon, if it can be avoided. I'm trying to make some progress on a run of my own, and I keep having to start over. Ten or twenty extra crit mod is probably not game-breaking, but I always start over whenever I encounter a bug that can't be fixed for a current character via an update. Needless to say, I haven't gotten very far today...

Apologies, once again, for updating so frequently. I hope it didn't cause anyone too much inconvenience.

[nsrr]

For the non-cooperative backgrounds, would it work to actually make the unlit tiles look lighter? maybe a very mute yellow?

On dark backgrounds, maybe, but I'm still not even sure if this is something I am going to be able to tackle. I'll look into doing something about it, but, like I said, no promises.

In a lot of Christian imagery, the devil carries a pitchfork and his demons are prodding damned souls into hell with them, so that was my reasoning. Also, (other than the steamsaws) I can't think of a weapon in ToME that would cause more pain. The wound would be harder to treat and would be shallower than a sword or axe because there's only so much of the length that could be impaled into the enemy, so the death would almost necessarily be more drawn out, giving the Dark Priest more time to utterly crush the will and soul of his victim before their demise.

(Completely random and VERY GRAPHIC story incoming)
Just imagine your character pacing around the broken form of the Assassin Lord, having dispatched his allies already, and espousing the Good Word of Pain before bashing his withered, unhealed midsection with the blunt end of your trident. The crumpled foe cries out a stream of curses that turn into wimpers as you lean into the trident, slowly pushing it down until you feel it hit stone. "Kill me.. Please.." he manages to wheeze. You cackle as you wrench your weapon and swing the rot clinging to it from his body from the end, splashing some onto his face in the process. "So you finally see IT, don't you? Your precious god of money means nothing, never has."
You stab the decapitated head of one of his minions with your trident and wave it in front of his face, magically moving it's mouth as you speak. "The only reality is suffering and death. I would have accepted it long ago had I not been blessed enough to deliver it to others." You move the head to his chest and send a surge of energy to it, causing the mouth to violently unhinge and SNAP shut, tearing through armor and flesh alike. His eyes, previously clouded, snap to attention as he shrieks and you continue. "SING! You wanted death so cry out.. CALL FOR IT!" Another pulse. SNAP! Felt like that one got a rib. "YOU WILL NEVER FEEL THIS ALIVE SO SING!!!" Pulse. SNAP! more ribs, and his cries are fading so we must be at least partially into the lungs. "Want for the loving embrace of nothingness, for to know that divine release is to know all. I only wish I could join you right now my son, but my mission is not yet ended."
Pulse.
SNAP!
His whimpering ceases, as does his breathing. You draw your trident away to see the mangled heart of the once proud assassin lord clutched between the teeth of the head at its' end. You place your foot against it and push it off your weapon after a moment of admiring your most creative kill yet. You look for the kidnapped merchant to show him the way, but he wisely made his escape while you were busy. You sigh as you imagine what a wealthy merchant's family would look like when shown the Good Word, and head off to Last Hope to look for the next Good Kill, knowing there's few other places a wealthy human salesman would live.

Ominous, huh? On a side note, I would possibly be interested in writing more if you're interested in tweaking the quest to fit your class (it doesn't make sense for a dark priest like this to save ANYONE to me). I'll change the trident parts if you don't feel like I do, and if you think it's TOO graphic I completely understand and could easily tone that down a decent amount without completely changing it. Well, maybe not easily, but I have the time

Ah, pitchforks like devils might carry around. I suppose that makes a bit more sense, but a trident is still not really a pitchfork.

It would take a lot more than just removing the staff requirement from their talents, though. Tridents require strength both to equip and for damage, and the mastery requires both strength and dexterity, and can't be unlocked until very late in the game or with luck. Also, tridents are very rare, and making a build to use them can be very tedious.

Changing quests is not something I'm looking to do, at least not at this point, but I am kind of flattered that my class inspired you to write that. It's a tad graphic, but actually pretty good

The Dark Priest is meant to be more of a cheeky, slightly cheesy kind of malevolent, though. Hence all the 'Un' silliness, and blatant over-use of the word 'Dark'

As far as it not making sense for the Dark Priest to save anyone... Well, you don't have to save anyone, although there are certainly advantages to doing so. It makes little sense for a Necromancer (or a Reaver or Corruptor or Cursed or Doomed) to save anyone, either, but they certainly do.

I'm more interested in polishing up their mechanics and game play than worrying about lore details, anyhow.

[Toles of Maine Exits]

Ah, pitchforks like devils might carry around. I suppose that makes a bit more sense, but a trident is still not really a pitchfork.

It would take a lot more than just removing the staff requirement from their talents, though. Tridents require strength both to equip and for damage, and the mastery requires both strength and dexterity, and can't be unlocked until very late in the game or with luck. Also, tridents are very rare, and making a build to use them can be very tedious.

Changing quests is not something I'm looking to do, at least not at this point, but I am kind of flattered that my class inspired you to write that. It's a tad graphic, but actually pretty good

The Dark Priest is meant to be more of a cheeky, slightly cheesy kind of malevolent, though. Hence all the 'Un' silliness, and blatant over-use of the word 'Dark'

As far as it not making sense for the Dark Priest to save anyone... Well, you don't have to save anyone, although there are certainly advantages to doing so. It makes little sense for a Necromancer (or a Reaver or Corruptor or Cursed or Doomed) to save anyone, either, but they certainly do.

I'm more interested in polishing up their mechanics and game play than worrying about lore details, anyhow.

That makes sense. This is one of the most fun addon classes I've played and I just got carried away (maybe "Carrie'd" away ). If I can manage it, I might just make the "dark" quest as an addon myself. Probably not, but I can dream, can't I?

On tridents, thanks for the detailed reasoning, I hadn't thought about the scaling at all. Making them work well would be a nightmare!

[rexorcorum]

If the graphics are just swapping between a 'lit' and 'unlit' tile graphic, and some tile sets are just lacking the alternates, that could potentially be solved by creating some shaded versions of the tiles and overloading them into the set.

Just to chime in that there is no such thing image-wise. The lit and unlit status is handled solely by the code. Probably the aforementioned tilesets lack the necessary parts in their zone/grid files and thus it can be deemed a ToME bug perhaps? If so, report it in the "Bugs" forum and it will be looked upon at some point .

[nsrr]

If the graphics are just swapping between a 'lit' and 'unlit' tile graphic, and some tile sets are just lacking the alternates, that could potentially be solved by creating some shaded versions of the tiles and overloading them into the set.

Just to chime in that there is no such thing image-wise. The lit and unlit status is handled solely by the code. Probably the aforementioned tilesets lack the necessary parts in their zone/grid files and thus it can be deemed a ToME bug perhaps? If so, report it in the "Bugs" forum and it will be looked upon at some point .

Thanks for the clarification, Rexo!
I had suspected that was more likely the case, but I hadn't had a chance to look into it yet. I'll have to investigate it a bit further before I make a bug report, but if it turns out to be the case that it's something missing in the zone/grid file, I will. I was fighting with that stupid Fervor bug all day yesterday and didn't actually get a chance to see how things looked in Scintillating Caves and so on.

[nsrr]

After much investigation, I have determined that the issue with the Scintillating Caves is not a bug at all. It is, in fact, due to their, well, 'scintillation', heh

You've probably noticed that the crystal 'walls' shift in color from a red-ish tint to a green-ish tint and back. This is handled by a 'foreground' function in the zone definition, which shifts the color of all of the tiles, although it is next-to-impossible to detect the change on the floor tiles, due to their color. Evidently, the shading for lit/unlit tiles is also handled in the 'foreground', so the function that causes the color shift is overriding the normal shading for lit/unlit tiles. So, this is likely a problem unique to this zone.

Now, if Shalore were not such a popular race, and a particularly good choice for a mage, I might let this slide. As it is though, it is not hard to imagine that lot of folks trying out Dark Priest for the first time will roll a Shalore, and I don't want them to be put off from the Unlight mechanic by the wonkiness of the zone they happen to start in. So, something will be done.

I could 'fix' it with an overload of the zone file, as I have done in my testing, but this is kind of a 'brute force' approach and could, potentially, cause conflicts with other addons or future versions of ToME. I'm going to look into using a superload to accomplish the same, but I'm not totally sure how that would work and I am going to have to get some advice from more experienced modders.

Stay tuned, and I will see what I can up with.

[nsrr]

Ok, after seeking the advice of those wiser than myself (special thanks to StarKeep), I have implemented a solution for the Scintillating Caves problem. The short story is that they will no longer 'scintillate' if you are using this addon, but they will properly shade unlit floor tiles.

As to the issue of all the tiles around the player appearing lit, this is apparently a feature of having either infravision or heightened senses that facilitates exploration, and would be very hard for me to do anything about, if possible at all.

While considering the problem, I realized that once the Dark Priest had the TL 3 bonus from Total Dark (unlighting the tile you are on if it is lit and there is an unlit tile in your aura), it would be a lot less of an issue. So, I unlocked that functionality of Aura of Unlight by default and buffed the other aspect of the TL 3 Total Dark bonus. Specifically, the Bane that it causes will deal more damage per turn and last longer.

This makes it so you are more or less always Unseen if your Aura is active (assuming you have built up or already stored enough Shadow Charges for it to activate). This almost makes it too easy to gain the bonuses from being Unseen and/or on an unlit tile, though. This may end up seeing some tweaking, as I rather liked the bit of gameplay that was created by having to try to move to an unlit tile when you really need that Invisibility.

While I was updating Aura of Unlight, I decided that the effect from having all tiles in your Aura already unlit could be a little stronger. As such, it will now heal an amount of life equal to the stamina restoration each turn.

Melee build still felt a bit weak at the start due to a lack of accuracy, so I buffed Sinister Power, once again. Increasing the low value of the Cunning scaling didn't seem to have much effect, so I added a flat base value to it and upped the Cunning scaling, again. It should now grant around 10 accuracy from the start.

Changelog:
v2.0.5
[General]
Added a superload (mod/class/game.displayMap) that will prevent the foreground data from the Scintillating Caves zone from loading. This stops the usual color-shifting of tiles in the zone, but allows for tiles to be properly shaded when unlit.

[Aura of Unlight]
Unliting the player's tile in exchange for lighting an unlit tile within the Aura is now base functionality.
If all the tiles within the Aura are unlit, the player will now Heal for an amount equal to the Stamina restoration.

[Total Dark]
TL 3 no longer grants the aforementioned functionality to Aura of Unlight.
Increased duration (4 to 6) and damage of the Bane of Confusion.

[Sinister Power]
Increased accuracy bonus.

[nsrr]

After being stumped by an issue with a 'minor change' I wanted to make to Shadow Pulse for well over a week, I finally came up with a solution... and then went on a coding spree

This was going to be part of a few changes for a minor update, but once I got that sorted out, I just kept going. A few talents have been switched up, and Dark Priests have yet another, all new talent tree.

I will do the proper change log and OP update in the next day or two, when I have some time. Burned up all my free time (and then some) coding and debugging the update, so I will try to give a brief rundown, for the time being.

First up, I couldn't get the update to post to the Steam Workshop. I've had a similar problem before, but the solution that worked before didn't seem to do the trick. I will get it up on Steam as soon as I can.

Now, the changes.

Cunning/Wicked Mind has been moved to generic. Life Manipulation and Dark Thoughts have swapped places within the tree.

Technique/Combat Training and Combat Techniques have been removed (you can still learn Combat Training from Last Hope, if you like).

Spell/Staff Combat has been added, unlocked at 1.3 mastery.

Cunning/Zeal has seen some changes to avoid redundancies with Staff Combat.
Righteous Instrument is no longer a staff mastery talent, and the mana per Cunning has been moved to Sinister Power as a passive bonus (regardless of equipped weapon).
Righteous Instrument now grants accuracy, based on Cunning, and Physical Power, based on Spellpower, when wielding a staff.
The passive bonus from Humble now grants Armor Hardiness, based on Spellpower, and Projectile Slowing, based on Cunning, instead of Armor and Defense. These bonuses are applied passively, but only when wearing cloth or light armor.

Spell/Aegis is now locked, but the mastery level has been increased back to 1.3.

The Unseen effect granted by Aura of Unlight will now increase Fatigue rather than draining mana. Fatigue scales from ~15 to 5.
Additionally, the Unseen effect will only be applied when wearing cloth or light armor. Being Unseen can provide many defensive bonuses (chance to ignore damage, significantly increased all resistance, increased movement speed, as well as the fact that many enemies will ignore you more often than not), and this prevents stacking these bonuses with the bonuses from Heavy or Massive armor, while also giving the player an option to bypass the Unseen effect while still using Unlight, if they so choose.

Shadow Pulse no longer costs Shadow Charges and will instead generate Shadow Charges for each unlit tile within your Aura of Unlight, up to a limit that increases with talent level (scales from ~2 to 8 ).

The cooldown of both Umbral Swiftness and Dark Adept has been reduced. The cost of Umbral Swiftness has been increased to 5 Shadow Charges, from 4, and the damage has been increased.

Blink Strike attacks now deal their damage as the current element of your staff.

Added a new, high-level, locked class tree featuring more Unhealing.

Spell/Malediction

Dark Word:
Unheals targets in a cone and afflicts them with Dark Unhealing for 5 turns, increasing healing factor and causing additional unhealing over the duration. Unhealing-over-time is equal to the initial unhealing.

Dark Transfusion:
Unheal a target enemy and heal yourself for the same amount. Your enemy will be afflicted with Dark Unhealing for 5 turns, increasing healing factor and unhealing them over the duration. You will gain Dark Transfusion for 5 turns, increasing your healing factor and healing yourself each turn for the duration. Unhealing- and healing-over-time are equal to the initial values.

Siphon Vigor:
Unheal all enemies within a radius around you. Each enemy affected will also be afflicted with Dark Siphoning for 6 turns, reducing life regeneration by [scales ~ 2 - 6]. You will gain the Dark Siphoner effect for 6 turns, granting yourself an equal amount of life regen. The life regeneration reduction from Dark Siphoning can reduce regen below 0, and the regen granted by Dark Siphoner will stack for each enemy hit by the spell.

Dark Touch:
Melee range, long, fixed cooldown (42 turns). Unheal your victim for [scales from ~2 to 6]% of their maximum life instantly and an additional, equal, amount over the next five turns. (This looks weak at first glance, but with more sources of Dark Unhealing it is now very possible to boost your target's healing modifier up to the maximum value of 250% , causing this to Unheal 30% of max life total at talent level 5.)

Well, that was much less brief than I had intended, and I probably still forgot something, but that's about the shape of it.

I'm pretty happy with where this class is now, from a design standpoint, and this is likely the last major version update it will see. I still have play testing to do, and of course I am always glad to have feedback, and I'm sure there will be some tweaks and, inevitably, bug fixes.

There are a lot more options now than when the class started, between new talent trees and the vanilla trees that I have made available, and there is really no way I'll be able test out every build. From this point on any updates are going to be heavily influenced by the feedback that I get, so please don't hesitate to share your experience. Thanks, and enjoy!

[maanur]

Zeal / Humble.
Description says: "hitting all adjacent targets for N weapon damage as Arcane"
According to Combat log, the damage is still Physical...
Never seen status effect "Humble" on enemies after using this talent, and Combat log doesn't say that they "shrug off ..." that effect.

[nsrr]

Zeal / Humble.
Description says: "hitting all adjacent targets for N weapon damage as Arcane"
According to Combat log, the damage is still Physical...
Never seen status effect "Humble" on enemies after using this talent, and Combat log doesn't say that they "shrug off ..." that effect.

Not sure how I missed that one; good catch!

The attack uses (or, is supposed to use) a special damage type, 'Arcane Numb'. It is the damage type which also imparts the 'Humbled' effect.
There was a typo in the damage type. Evidently this caused the game to revert to 'Physical', rather than throwing an error.

Corrected in version 3.0.1. Thanks for your feedback!

Unfortunately, I am still not able to upload the update to the Steam Workshop. I have tried everything I can think of, and I was hoping it may have been just a connectivity problem that would resolve itself, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm still looking into it, and I will post an update here if I manage to successfully upload it.

[nsrr]

Nothing like finding a bug five minutes after you upload a new version

The reworked version of Shadow Pulse was missing a check for the Shadow Charges effect, which would cause an error if you cast it without the effect.

Corrected in version 3.0.2

[maanur]

A humble suggestion:
1."Arcane Weapon / Arcane Repulsion" seems like a one-point-wonder to me.
2. Arcane melee build suggests me to take Spell / Aether with 1/1/1/5, because first two talents are aoe friendly-fire things (therefore needing 5 in Spellcraft), and the Aether Avatar is plain useless with melee orientation of Dark Priest.

So, may be you should consider giving Arcane Repulsion something like "at level 5 you can use "Arcane Weapon" talents in Aether Avatar form"... Well, it must be well tested, because it may become a little overpowered. But may not)

P.S.: Or, perhaps, Arcane Repulsion could give scaling arcane resistance - that will be tricky, but surely grant another reason to actually use that Spell / Aether first and second skills.

[astralInferno]

Humble and Life Manipulation are both use speed: standard. presumably they should be weapon/spell respectively?

The invisibility damage penalty seems to still be there on aura of unlight. iirc you said you wanted to get rid of it? it's crippling. (I mean, I oneshot celia by doing over 2k damage with blunt thrust, so I guess I could eat the penalty, but...)