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

[Kamani]

Interesting. Looking forward to whatever happens next.

[Lilith Dragmire]

Hey, I found a minor typo in the Fire Drake class quest. In "Reflections: The Dragons Within" it says 'litte' where it should be 'little'. I'm just a stickler for good spelling, so I'll post any typos I find in this addon/module. I'm really enjoying this so far. Great work on it!

[nekarcos]

@Lilith Dragmire
A MAJOR, all-inclusive update is coming somewhat soon for it. As I'm obsessed with spoilers and first impressions, I can't really say much about it yet other than that I'm honestly ashamed at how "lame" the current version is compared to what's coming soon. That said, look forward to A LOT of improvements regarding Fire Drake and Drakelings (and not just typos and spelling corrections lol)

To give you a bit of a teaser: The "Dragon Scales" tree is going to allow you and your drakelings to be "nourished" by elements other than just fire, so you'll be able to dabble with the idea of being something other than a fire dragon in the future (you'll still be forced to take Fire Drake Scales, however).

[Kamani]

I am really looking forward to whatever is next.

[Kaja Rainbow]

I quite like this addon's story, though it does have its issues. Ritch's issues have already been discussed, but all the creatures share a common extremely severe disability (I cannot overestimate how severe it is): Not being able to use inscriptions. And the things they get, such as the talents in the Natural Combat tree, simply aren't enough. The only way to remove status effects is to either use the extremely unreliable talent that clears a random including 0 number of physical conditions or eat an wild infusion which consumes both a turn and the infusion itself. So you have extremely limited resources for removing conditions particularly mental or magical ones, and with the reusable talent you have a 20 turn cooldown which is longer than most wild infusions, plus you might not even clear any condition when you urgently need it.

And in actual practice, I found Hydra to be lacking in burst healing. Don't know about the other summons, but in order to get burst healing, you need to remove your primary source of passive healing, and then you're stuck without any healing for a good number of turns. Not to mention that depending on much regeneration you have left, the burst healing might not even be much at all.

...The lack of good escape options really hurts, too. The Natural Combat talent that grands you movespeed doesn't give a high effect and if you already popped another Natural Combat talent, odds are it's on cooldown.

Basically if the Natural Combat tree's to function as an inscription replacement, it needs major improvement. My suggestions are as follows:

• Remove Consume's receiving of infusion effects upon eating it, but keep the other effects (max HP increase, etc.). ToME's philosophy deliberately eschews limited use resources, but Consume's design brings that back into the game, and I don't think that benefits the addon. This does mean you'll be munching on inscriptions as soon as you find them unless you want to keep them for corruption reduction, but I suppose that's okay.
• Improve Natural Combat talents as needed to make the creatures viable without inscription.
• Add stat based scaling to Natural Combat active effects where it make sense. That way you can have endgame worthy effects only when you have endgame worthy stats. Maybe also talent level based scaling, but I'd recommend changing the talents to 5 levels instead of 10 if you do that.
• Do something about those talents putting each other on cooldown. Maybe remove that feature entirely.
• Add methods of removing mental and magical effects. Replacing healing infusions isn't necessary, though, the creatures already have their own individual healing trees. Do improve said trees as necessary to accord for lack of infusion based healing.

[nekarcos]

@Kaja Rainbow
This add-on is still VERY incomplete, despite how it may look-- Especially the current 6-month-old version lol

Rest assured-- Most of what you've described is (mostly) rectified-- But you'll just have to wait and see the improvements yourself when the update comes out. As I've said: I don't like spoilers, and I'm not going to tease anybody with the exact details when it's not really "around the corner" yet.

[Kaja Rainbow]

Good to hear! As I said, I really like the story. It's a very interesting addon.

[nekarcos]

A quick PSA to any new players:

I have confirmed that the current version of OoTS has various incompatibilities with the newest version of ToME. I DO NOT recommend keeping the add-on active if you are NOT playing an Avatar-type run-- And even if you are, there is still some overloaded code that will subtly break some things under the lid, so I recommend steering clear for now.

If you DO wish to play it anyways, I can no longer promise 100% functionality-- Especially not with damage calculations... It seems those have changed a tad bit.


... That is all.

[Kamani]

Okay. Thanks for the warning.

[Almonihah]

I'm also excited to see what the next version is like.

[nekarcos]

It's been a while since I've said much about what is going on.

I decided to open up a bit more about my status (since I've been teasing everyone along about the new version for a while now).


*** "Odyssey of The Summoner"
- As of current, I have a bug/fix list that expands to well over 2 forum pages. The list of actual things I've fixed is maybe about 1 and a half pages itself. There is A LOT I would like to fix (ideally), since it's pretty heart-wrenching to KNOW about 1000 bugs and to never bother fixing them. PARTICULARLY, I have made SEVERAL Prodigies compatible with Avatars (since a good majority of them were inaccessible and/or impossible due to mechanics).
- I have tweaked, improved, nerfed, buffed, modified, overhauled, and (in some cases) completely removed SEVERAL, several talents. For example, my favorite tweak thus far has been to Macabre End, which now leaves enemies "dead-but-standing", and any additional damage you do while they're in this state is what generates the "Overkill" effect. I don't want to go over the entire list though, because things are QUITE liable to change between now and when this comes out. (Pssst: Hydra is getting more types of heads)
- MANY mechanics/systems have been modified and/or improved. For example, I have, quite literally, added a "Wildness" stat to characters now, which is now what represents the potency of various Natural Combat effects, as well as some other things.
- The "Natural Attacks" system is now fully fleshed out, tested, and integrated into gameplay. That is to say, expect to be fighting with your Eyal-given body more than weapons on the floor or your bare knuckles-- Hydra won't be the ONLY class that's capable of doing multiple attacks now!

*** "Voices From Beyond" (the upcoming "Expansion" for "Odyssey of The Summoner")
- As you know, "Ritch" and "Hydra" do not have their "Reflections" quests fleshed out-- And Fire Drake (although having much of it done) does not yet have the bits that "link" to the main plot. Plus, to make matters even worse, now I need to include War Hound's, Minotaur's, and Stone Golem's as well. As you can imagine, this was going to take a bit-- But once this is done, there will FINALLY be a conclusion to the Odyssey of The Summoner storyline.
- Many new talents with many new mechanics-- I have needed to "improve" a few old mechanics to make them even more compatible with the current ones. Believe me when I say: "You haven't seen anything yet." To give some hints, there's a talent that lets you wrap metal objects around your body to improve your armor hardiness... There's also a talent that makes you completely blind, but if you CAN see something (say through Telepathy)... Hm! Oh yeah, and Avatars are going to get their own exclusive Antimagic trees! How about that?
- As you know, Nature is all about equilibrium and balance. While Avatars are getting new Antimagic abilities, they are also going to FINALLY get their "advanced" Blighting talent trees (which you will acquire through a prodigy called "Superior Blighted Form"). This was ORIGINALLY supposed to be in OoTS, but I simply did not have enough time to play or test what "Spellpower" playthroughs were like with Avatars. Of course, now that I have, we can finally start looking into how to TRULY become a mockery of nature, heh heh heh...

*** Miscellaneous stuff
- Not "all" of my production has been in Odyssey of The Summoner alone-- I have been working on various new "Quality of Life" mods as well-- But these are the really "powerful" ones that I've always been too reluctant to release. These ones had the most potential to muck up the game or cause bugs, so they have needed EXTENSIVE testing. It would be rude to release something that I'm not certain is thoroughly safe yet.
- I have also often alluded to "a mod which would add special encounters and new enemies". The main allure of this add-on will be that its content will be available to ANY class and NOT just Avatars, as well as presenting enemies that will use OoTS's enormous quantity of unique talents AGAINST you. Needless to say, this has involved learning a new part of the engine, so I mostly had to start from scratch for this one, heh...
- ... Oh yeah-- And the "Particle Effects" add-on is getting a MAJOR update that's going to add new particles, improve graphics a bit, and even let you choose which particles appear or don't. Again, I needed to test a lot of this for bugginess-- I am suffering NOW so that YOU don't have to later!


So yes, this has all been a rather ENORMOUS undertaking for just one guy-- And again, I want to say: Rest assured-- I AM certainly still here, and I AM definitely still working on this. Don't take my silence as "absence"-- But rather, take it as "diligence". My goal is to deliver something that will "WOW" everyone just as much as OoTS's first release did (-- And maybe even cause people who've never even seen it before to swoon on the spot...)

Cheers, and thanks for listening (... Errrm... If anyone out there still is...)


PS: "Why can't you just release an incomplete, alpha/beta version right now??"
... Do you like eating uncooked eggs? Patience, friend!

PPS: Why do colds suck so much? Ugggghhhnnn...

[Kamani]

SO happy that Blighted Form will get more stuff. I tried a blighted run, but not getting any skill until level 10 and getting only one skill tree made it pointless (in retrospect, I should have just waited for updates, but...). Also, everything else sounds amazing. Looking forward to it!

[nsrr]

I'm happy to hear you're still working on the project. I'll be very interested to so how the changes play out, and I'm especially excited to see the melee avatars. I'm also really curious about your other QoL mods. The status effect display is one of the nicest QoL mods there is, IMHO, and I'd be really interested to see what else you have to offer.

Thnks for the update. Cheers

[Almonihah]

Oooo, sounds awesome! I'll have to keep an eye out...

[Kamani]

Through a minor glitch in Tales of Maj'Eyal (A glitch that should NEVER be removed), it is probably possible to become antimagic by getting the Antimagic Wyrm Bile from the infinite dungeon. I probably won't test this, because I only have three antimagic wyrm biles stored (For Antimagic Ghoul Sawbutchers (This actually worked)), but I just realized that anyway.