Abilities that seem too powerful

[kipar]

There is a list of features that makes dealing with 50+ monsters and bosses possible and almost easy.
Personally I think they are overpowered, but if they are required to win they are ok, but everything else should be improved to match them. Anyway existance of 'must have' abilities that makes game much easier than without them IMHO isn't ok.

1. Soul Guard. With 10AP it effectively multiplies your HP by 10. At least while you have enough souls. It's too good comparing to Increased Life and other abilities. Everybody 'must have'.

2. Unreal discounts with charisma>200. Why seek for gold when you can buy everything in rare items shop (except instant levelling scrolls ) for 1000 gold. Not good. Imho charisma should be limited to 100, maybe 150 for discounts calculation purposes.

3. One With Shadows ability - pay one point and forget about raising dexterity and agility. Second point in this ability won't change anything. I suggest either use only base stealth in it, or change it to be linear. So each point will give you 2.5%stealth to dex\agility. 'Must have' for stealth-based build.

4. Elemental Weapon. If everybody can for 1 AP change damage-type of any melee weapon, all brands and Ice\cursed\artifact damage-type activations are almost useless. I suggest making it possible only after 10 AP, same as for similar marksman ability. 'Must have' for melee-based build.

5. Top firearms seem to be better than top melee weapons on high levels (with equal dexterity and skill. Maybe high strength can change situation, but I doubt it). I don't say they should be nerfed. Maybe adamantium\mithril melee weapons should be boosted. Getting titanium weapons is practically impossible right now but adamantium isn't enough to beat some of monsters\bosses who don't pose any threat to gun user (especially boss returners\teleporters).

[Gando]

the only one I flat out disagree with is the Elemental Weapon . It is not necessarily a good thing to stray into EL territory if you aren't a mage in need of piercing spells. EW is a great ability but I don't think it needs nerfing.

Now with the charisma issue I have a solution:
Change the way stores buy things. Have it so they never buy for more than 95% of true value. Then make sure they never sell for less than 105%. So Charisma discounts count still uninflating the prices to near true value but they don't allow recursion.

Not sure at all about One-with-shadows. I've never used it successfully. Stealth itself needs fixing so this is basically just a stat increase ability for now. But if you say it is broken I guess it is.

Soul Guard is a good ability BUT it requires fuel, while I agree that it could be worse and still be useful Soul Guardian's other abilities outside of soul bind aren't that hot and to be fair Soul Bind is a poor man's crafting until you can figure out how to kill uniques with Soul Capture which is a frustrating and time consuming task. I'm on the fence with this, thinking that if you nerf it you have to make Soul Binding better (5 depth per ap for instance) or make the other abilities more attractive somehow.

Fire arms while a great flavor in the game seem to me to be a completely broken system. Hard to use, but if you are patient (more than me any way) they kill everything with no drawbacks.) The problem is Bows/Xbows suck so the guns are like the vorpal weapons of the game. Dunno how they would be nerfed. No solution ideas come to mind atm.

The reason melee weapon materials past mithril are scarce is because the game is unfinished. Even so Titanium (the next up) doesn't show until 90... I agree the base stats could be better...but its hard to balance that with early levels. Especially with powergamers who known the shortcuts risk vs gain tricks to get the best weapons asap.

[Gando]

Speaking of potential exploits. Remember how I said I was having trouble identifying what Twist Items is good for? The answer is create a spell that finds levelables (10k or so mana so its not for low levels) cast it, enter a random dungeon, fill up on all the levelables you can carry then go home. Wash/Rinse/Repeat until mega rich (30k x 24 = 720k per run. that is almost the cost of a level to max scroll.) The thing about this is...I thought the spell would just affect the boss level but it affects all levels prior to it and the boss level has crap instead so its NEVER a good idea to go down there once you have twisted the dungeon...(unless you are a masochist.)

I think this counts as overpowered and also kind of inappropriate since for instance what I really wanted was to find items of better material than mithril and instead found lots of junk items turned into levelables. (big money but worthless for playing with unless you absolutely can't find a better levelable item.)

I apologize for not testing this sooner. To be truthful I stayed away from the twisted spells after experimenting with Diviners Wish ability which was utterly broken and useless to me (Though perhaps there is a way to use it that isn't, I didn't discover that way.) If I had tested this sooner I'd have reported this months ago.

[Gando]

Actually Twist Items is even more broken than I thought. If you raise the magic items depth but keep the setting at normal ALL items dropped by bosses and elites will be unmagical. This doesn't include Artifacts which very rarely drop anyway but otherwise you will see NO magic items no matter how far down you go.

[kipar]

About wish ability - afaik it just don't work. It can make dungeon twisted but it will never generate desired item. I've posted that already - in previous release there is a mistake in script code. I've tried to fix it but found that I don't know Portralis data structures enough.


Revive monsters spell seem broken\overpowered too.
1. Raised monsters are permanent and even follow you upstairs\downstairs (they are not truely permanent, they don't follow you if you recall or travel in wilderness).
2. They have a level = 2*your level, no matter how high your skills or stats are.
3. You can summon monsters for a few turns, then kill them, then revive to bind them 'forever'. Kind of evil necromancy and exploitable.

I suggest making Revive monsters variable-cost (something like test Spell power vs. monster depth) and maybe even temporal as summoning spell (may be have a very long duration but still temporal).
And monsters must do not follow you when go upstairs\downstairs.

[Gando]

Feb 8, 2010 5:14:06 GMT -5 kipar said:

About wish ability - afaik it just don't work. It can make dungeon twisted but it will never generate desired item. I've posted that already - in previous release there is a mistake in script code. I've tried to fix it but found that I don't know Portralis data structures enough.

This isn't about Diviner's Wish
this is about the Divination spell Twist Items.

Revive monsters spell seem broken\overpowered too.
1. Raised monsters are permanent and even follow you upstairs\downstairs (they are not truely permanent, they don't follow you if you recall or travel in wilderness).
2. They have a level = 2*your level, no matter how high your skills or stats are.
3. You can summon monsters for a few turns, then kill them, then revive to bind them 'forever'. Kind of evil necromancy and exploitable.

I suggest making Revive monsters variable-cost (something like test Spell power vs. monster depth) and maybe even temporal as summoning spell (may be have a very long duration but still temporal).
And monsters must do not follow you when go upstairs\downstairs.

Weird...I don't think anyone else has ever even USED that spell.

[Variaz]

5. Top firearms seem to be better than top melee weapons on high levels (with equal dexterity and skill. Maybe high strength can change situation, but I doubt it). I don't say they should be nerfed. Maybe adamantium\mithril melee weapons should be boosted. Getting titanium weapons is practically impossible right now but adamantium isn't enough to beat some of monsters\bosses who don't pose any threat to gun user (especially boss returners\teleporters).

Shots for shots, ranged is actually more powerful than melee. Not just guns, but bows/crossbows as well. But you get less shots than blows.

It may be a bit overpowered, especially abilities like True Shot, which will eventually be nerfed. High damages, combined with very high hit rate, and having to focus on a single stat for both hit and damages, makes ranged easy and powerful. Firearms are harder to use, but are very rewarding if you do so.