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Post by Variaz on Mar 10, 2008 1:08:51 GMT -5
A thread dedicated to the EXTREMELY improved Crafting and Alchemy skills, and also the Enchanter class.
As a first announcement, I want to let you know that I've already lowered Crafting's power a bit. The to_d, to_h and to_a bonus have been halved, as they were a bit too high at the beginning. They're still nice, but not too high anymore. I've already reupload the game, so you might want to redownload and play with that change to test the skill properly. (I've also fixed the Bronze Great Axe recipe, which was made of a Great Axe Handle and a Small Axe Handle, instead of a Great Axe Handle and Bronze.)
Feel free to post any comments/suggestions about the skills!
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Post by junyortrakr on Mar 10, 2008 7:39:10 GMT -5
I haven't tried the new version yet, although the crafting and alchemy changes sound good.
I know you were talking about changing the stores around a little, but will there be any place beyond the rare black market sale to find any components? With the new decomposition rules, it sounds like it'll be a long time before you have the ability to do iron, let alone steel, and ingots and anything else beyond the occasional skein of cotton are rare finds indeed.
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Post by Variaz on Mar 10, 2008 7:54:09 GMT -5
Well, now that shops are customizeable, it's possible some places will sell them. But ingots being rare isn't necessarely a bad thing. It's a way to balance the skill, and force the player to either invest in it, or to not be so quick about dissing away purples. I'm now playing a reincarnation of Raya the (clumsy) Spearmaiden of Light, this time she makes up for her lack of dexterity by learning the art of Crafting! So far, at Crafting skill 35, I can say it's a really good skill, as you can customize your equipment and it adds a lot of versatility and survivability to your character. At this point, I still can't decompose Steel and I haven't found steel yet, but the iron mail I made is better than a Steel Mail now. Not to mention it gives me +6 to Defense. That's what I like about Crafting, it's the customization and versatility it adds to your character. It's MUCH better than the early game purples. In fact, one thing I'm considering is to perhaps increase the quality standard of randomly generated purples. While Crafting is great, we still have to consider that not everyone will want to use it. While blue items and artifacts that gain levels are very powerful, I can't say the same for normal purples. Even at depth 20, I can still find stuff like (+2, +3), +1 to Infravision...meh. Not the stuff I want to see. So perhaps I'll put a minimum quality for randomly generated magic items, so that the deeper you go, the less crap you find. EDIT: In fact, right now, I've just changed the magic item generation formula a bit. Instead of having a "bonus level" between 1 and (item's rank * 2), it's now between (item's rank) and (item's rank * 2). This mean that there will be less randomly generated crap. EDIT 2: I just reuploaded the binaries with this modified objects.lua file. But if you don't want to redownload, you can open the objects.lua file in /lib/script, then at line 35 change bonuslevel = lua_randint(itemlevel * 2) to bonuslevel = lua_randint(itemlevel) + itemlevel
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Post by Variaz on Mar 10, 2008 8:46:50 GMT -5
Another reupload already! This time, I've increased the depth of ores, because I don't want Mithril to show up in the black market. Before you think it's unfair, keep in mind that before this release, Crafting was a rather bad skill, so the low depth of ores was to make up for it(didn't really make up for anything though). Now that the skill is a lot better, we need to balance it.
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Post by Gando on Mar 10, 2008 18:27:17 GMT -5
Well so far its been fun playing this enchanter once I got past the innumerable early deaths, character remakes and holes in my monitor from wayward flailing fists of aggravation...The only real complaint I have is about the colors of the enchanted items...Orange being my least favorite color is quite jarring when I have alot of orange items on (I use a recall window to display my equip so I dont forget what I have on.) A nicer color (imho) would be the sky blue/cyan used for the water potions. Thank you for making a rocking upgrade btw.
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Post by phlinn on Mar 11, 2008 13:42:07 GMT -5
I have a suggestion for the level 10 enchanter ability, since you indicated in the previous locked thread that the current ability is unbalanced. Allow for a chance for crafted items to be levelled. 1% per point in the ability perhaps?
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Post by Variaz on Mar 11, 2008 14:01:10 GMT -5
No. I don't want crafted items to be able to gain levels. Gaining customization and versatility is already a big plus, in addition to a big early game advantage. While Crafting is great, I don't want players who choose not to take that skill to be gimped in the long term, so I will leave leveling to blues, greens and artifacts. Besides, with a high enough skill, the crafted items don't really NEED leveling. They would just be overpowered with it.
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Post by Gando on Mar 11, 2008 14:46:01 GMT -5
I agree...the crafted items get a bit ridiculous at high levels of crafting if you add in leveling too. Unless there is an ability similar to the Soul Guardian's soul binding that lets an Enchanter with x in alchemy and crafting make blue items instead of orange (ie no tweak points from the skills to start with but random powers/skills/stats and the ability to level. But that might lead to people having blue items too early in the game...I really dont know...balance issues always boggle my mind these days.
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Post by Variaz on Mar 11, 2008 16:18:32 GMT -5
Blues, greens and artifacts are actually quite on par with crafted items if you take the time to level them up, perhaps even better if you're lucky to get one with good starting stats, then level it up 100 times for 100 stats points! It takes time of course, but they also get to_hit, to_dam, AC and base damages increases in the process.
But adding levels to crafted items would just be too much.
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Post by junyortrakr on Mar 11, 2008 16:52:37 GMT -5
Well, I wasn't only thinking about ingots being available. For example, there may be a shop that specializes in mushrooms and herbs for potions. Of course, the higher level ones may be stocked somewhat infrequently and in small quantities, but it might be convenient. A store may sell completely basic things like empty bottles or bottles of water, too.
For crafting, there may be a shop that just sells basic things like shoe forms and weapon handles. They may not sell the higher level ones, but I don't see why they couldn't sell the basic ones that currently pretty much have to be created by decomposing wimpy bronze or similar items, anyway.
I do like the idea of improving the purple items. They're barely better than the basic items you can by in the shop, so an upgrade would be useful.
As nice as it sounds, I agree that leveling crafted items sound too powerful.
Orange sounds fine to me. I really hate the light blue since, being colorblind, it's looks almost exactly the same as white to me, and I hate mixing them up.
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Post by Variaz on Mar 11, 2008 17:05:47 GMT -5
Thing is that when you beat an elite, the items dropped are based on the average between the dungeon level and the monster's depth. This may be why purples seems weak, because often the monsters you kill are weak, and you get a weak item. Even if you're at dungeon level 20, beating an elite Kobold Infantry will give you a rank 11 item, not enough to even have a slight chance of being blue. In addition to having weaker enchantments, the items themselves will be weaker(notice how much bronze you get from kobold swarms...). And this is not necessarely a bad thing either. After all, no way a small kobold should have the same kind of treasures an Ancient Dragon would.
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Post by Gando on Mar 11, 2008 18:28:09 GMT -5
To add another $.025 to the conversation: the randomness of the pval of item drops seems to be almost always weighted low, even off very tough monsters and uniques. Also not all elites and bosses are created equal...the returners are a nightmare in the waiting and easily outweigh the other types but they drop the same crappy stuff everyone else does which might lead one (an uninformed player for example) to believe the game makes the high end stuff extremely exclusive.
No solution comes to mind except ...if you dont like the way items drop you can always change the bonus values in the object.lua file to fit your ideal...be very careful with this as you could spoil the game if the values get too high...I tried for very low multipliers and managed to get decent stuff so it shouldnt be too hard. (note I have not added that change to this download yet since Enchanters do not require much in the way of drops and mine is doing just fine with being poor.)
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Post by Variaz on Mar 11, 2008 18:40:19 GMT -5
It could also be that the RNG doesn't like you. Random items aren't always rolled low. Notice the stuff in the black market is actually quite descent. One of the reasons it seems that way is what I explained about drops being based on the average between the monster's depth and the dungeon level. A lot of the elites/bosses are in the enemies that appear in large groups, the most common being the Kobold Infantry and the Devling Pikemen. But they also have a depth of 2, which will greatly lower the quality of items you get. That's why they always drop bronze stuff with lousy bonus. The only advice I can give you is to go deeper, and try to defeat stronger enemies. Some of the later elites and bosses are quite scary, but they can be beaten, and will drop much better stuff than Kobold Infantries and Devling Pikemen.
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Post by Gando on Mar 11, 2008 20:12:34 GMT -5
I guess much better is relative...the guys Im killing right now (not including the ubiquitous pikemen and infantry) drop iron items mostly but the base value is terrible. If I were dependent on items for money and power Id be screwed...It IS true that the RNG hates me...but thats a given with any game not just this one. As I noted earlier ...if I was unhappy with the drops Id change them as I did with my celestial pally (version #123 or so after numberous deletions).
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kipar
Champion
Posts: 201
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Post by kipar on Mar 15, 2008 6:03:46 GMT -5
I've played Enchanter today - and it's like a cheating:
5 skill points in crafting per level = 1 tweak point per item. You have 7-10 items (7 because making amulets and rings is harder: you can't just decompose normal rings) = 7-10 tweak points per level
Why raise any skill instead of crafting if you can have HIGHER level in this skill when you just raise crafting. The only minus is that you will not have skill feats but how many pluses: - You have much better equipment than you will find in dungeons - You can completely change your battle style with just wearing another equipment set (warrior - marksman - s.stalker - gunner - every skill can be yours while you raise only crafting and you will be better than normal characters of this class because you have More skill points) - Enchanters abilities (Improved Enchanting effectively doubles you tweak points so you will have 14-20 tweak points per level). You can raise Craft fighting and your craft skill will also replace fighting/shooting. - Any elite class is open for you - just make right items set and you get all needed stats&skills (only problem is skill levels) IMHO it's too universal and powerful character type now (of course cheat is not enchanter class - it's a crafting skill changes) - i suggests fixing it.
Maybe limit the number of tweak points with items depth? Than enchanter will be forced to buy or find expensive mithril/adamantine/blue-steel items to fully use crafting potential on high levels. Now enchanter just replace all other classes&characters spending only 2-3k for buying steel items in Jindar.
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