Some more notes

I've made some more notes. These are from memory, as my copy is on my other comp.

The only bugs I found was:

- Immaculate Visage seems to cancel out other permanent resistances. I once took this perk and used it, taking off my Red Dragon Scale Robe, only for such a dragon to roast me alive.

However, I hit rather hard against some balance issues:

- Invisibility, after trying to use it allot, is rather useless in my experiences. It never lasted long enough to run away, it doesn't effect high-level enemies for me (thus making it useless on the deepest levels) and it does not work reliably enough to escape tight situations.

Yes, I know that it supposed adjust to enemy's intelligences, but after some thinking I've came to a conclusion: Why should it do that? Why can't invisibility effect both smart and stupid creatures? Why does sheer intelligence allow you to see invisible creatures?

Instead, almost all creatures (with the exception of floating eyes and possibly the mages) should be unable to detect invisible creatures. They should be unable to follow you and bolts should be far less likely to hit you. The main purposes of Invisibility should be in allowing you to escape and surprise enemies.

- I have complained about this earlier, but Void and Mirror knights are still too hard due to their unique effect. Void Knights especially. Unless you have a method of quickly distancing yourself from it, you will inevitably die when meeting one. I once used three Harm spells in a row and I still died after facing a Void Knight.

Again, a compromise should be reached where they are not immune thrown potions (which makes sense). This way, players have a chance of survival against them.

- Reapers have waaaaay to high damage. I once engaged one, had full 28/28 health, put Armour on myself and prepared to use Heal. Instead, I was killed by the first strike.

Suggestions:

- Allow more creatures to be influenced by pacify, dragons especially. Switch it with Ward, to make it more worthwhile. As it is, it is rather useless in my experiences.

Or, you could make it so that it effects nearly all creatures but only for so long. Rather than remaining peaceful for long, they would suddenly come to their senses and try to chase you if they still can.

- Make it so that once you kill the summoner, their summoned creatures die.

- Make drain a bolt spell. It doesn't reliably kill enemies anyway and getting into touching distance makes them able to hurt you, reducing any HP gained by using it.

I also have some pictures of the some odd dungeon parts that I think are unintentional. I'll post them tomorrow.

First off, just to clarify, the notes below are from 1.1.1 or 1.2?

Zixinus wrote:

- Immaculate Visage seems to cancel out other permanent resistances. I once took this perk and used it, taking off my Red Dragon Scale Robe, only for such a dragon to roast me alive.

If this is 1.1.1, it should be fixed. If it's 1.2...then I'll be irritated at myself for missing yet another bug with permanent effects.

Zixinus wrote:

- Invisibility, after trying to use it allot, is rather useless in my experiences. It never lasted long enough to run away, it doesn't effect high-level enemies for me (thus making it useless on the deepest levels) and it does not work reliably enough to escape tight situations.

Yes, I know that it supposed adjust to enemy's intelligences, but after some thinking I've came to a conclusion: Why should it do that? Why can't invisibility effect both smart and stupid creatures? Why does sheer intelligence allow you to see invisible creatures?

Instead, almost all creatures (with the exception of floating eyes and possibly the mages) should be unable to detect invisible creatures. They should be unable to follow you and bolts should be far less likely to hit you. The main purposes of Invisibility should be in allowing you to escape and surprise enemies.

Well, the logical justification for why IQ has anything to do with it is that it represents the mob picking up subtle clues about your position. Following you by sound, seeing dust disturbed by your footsteps, that sort of thing. There's definitely a difference between seeing an invisible being and 'noticing' one by IQ. And that difference is variable; if high-IQ enemies can notice you well enough that invis is completely useless, then we can always turn down their ability to notice you. I'll play around with this a little more, see if there's not a better balance point for how well creatures can notice you.

Zixinus wrote:

- I have complained about this earlier, but Void and Mirror knights are still too hard due to their unique effect. Void Knights especially. Unless you have a method of quickly distancing yourself from it, you will inevitably die when meeting one. I once used three Harm spells in a row and I still died after facing a Void Knight.

Again, a compromise should be reached where they are not immune thrown potions (which makes sense). This way, players have a chance of survival against them.

Well, from a sense standpoint, I'll grant you that mirror knights being able to deflect thrown potions is a bit odd. But changing that opens the door for all kinds of weird corner cases...hobgoblin darter's darts, manticore's spines, as a start. And what about the ice spear spell?

As far as the balance perspective...version comes into play here, again: they got knocked down considerably in 1.2. Beyond that...I'm generally loathe to do this, but I think it's critical to the discussion at hand. Void knights have a very odd form of immunity. They are immune to everything that doesn't deal pure damage, essentially. Staff bolts work perfectly well on them, however. And harm does not, IIRC. The "absorbs your attack" message is supposed to convey that, but it may not be doing so. Mirror knights are actually much harder to answer, for that very reason...nothing in your typical arsenal except melee is effective against them. However, they don't deflect anything that is not a bolt or beam in shape. Balls (they can deflect the path of the ball, but not the blast), cones, and touch-spells work perfectly well on them, as does any sort of amped-up melee, or charged crystal balls, etc.

The knights are all extremely scary at close range, even storm knights. And I like mobs that require you to dip into abnormal tactics to handle them. I'm certainly willing to concede that the knights may still be too much to handle, even after the 1.2 changes, but I'm generally more in favor of lowering their melee damage (or possibly HP, but I'm guessing the damage is more of a problem) more, rather than pulling something interesting from the game.

Zixinus wrote:

- Reapers have waaaaay to high damage. I once engaged one, had full 28/28 health, put Armour on myself and prepared to use Heal. Instead, I was killed by the first strike.

Reapers don't actually deal damage. There's a reason they're as slow as they are...if they were any faster, they'd be incredibly deadly. As it is, there are still several countermeasures that make them completely harmless. And running is (almost) always an option.

Zixinus wrote:

- Allow more creatures to be influenced by pacify, dragons especially. Switch it with Ward, to make it more worthwhile. As it is, it is rather useless in my experiences.

Or, you could make it so that it effects nearly all creatures but only for so long. Rather than remaining peaceful for long, they would suddenly come to their senses and try to chase you if they still can.

Yeah, Ward has never seen a lot of use. Which makes me kind of sad, I think it's a really neat spell. Pacify's chance of succeeding, incidentally, is based on IQ as well, although not in the same way as invis, if I'm remembering right. Is pacify's effect strong enough to justify swapping it with ward?

Zixinus wrote:

- Make it so that once you kill the summoner, their summoned creatures die.

I really wish that were a simple thing to do, but unfortunately, the code gets in the way here. That's something I might be able to orchestrate for 2.0, but not in a smaller release.

Zixinus wrote:

- Make drain a bolt spell. It doesn't reliably kill enemies anyway and getting into touching distance makes them able to hurt you, reducing any HP gained by using it.

Hmm. Drain has always been kind of a contentious spell. Surprisingly difficult to balance correctly. Let me think on this one a bit, possibly poll for feedback.

It looks like you're a bit upset about invis, but let me tell you that Invisibility seems pretty fine to me. In ver .7 (I think) no creatures could See Invis, so I used it to walk pretty much unscathed all the way to Ath. Check the Beta discussion for the full account.

Right now, I think it works pretty well. By time most monsters can see through it, you should have better means of dealing with them. At least I did.

Another bug:

- If you use overcharge and raise dead on remains (green dragon in my case), two of the three dragons are hostile. Is this intentional?

One more suggestion:

- Merge Alien Mentality and Physiology and make the second Cosmic edge the ability to invert on will (call it "Duality" or "Dual Nature" or whatever). As it is, MP regen is just too slow for it to be worth it. Perhaps the two edges could be switched?

As promised, some images:

Examples of weird dungeon design









Another spelling error:



Notice northwest of me.

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First off, just to clarify, the notes below are from 1.1.1 or 1.2?

1.2

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Well, the logical justification for why IQ has anything to do with it is that it represents the mob picking up subtle clues about your position. Following you by sound, seeing dust disturbed by your footsteps, that sort of thing.

That certainly makes some sense but do you think that it is truly a good realistic choice?

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There's definitely a difference between seeing an invisible being and 'noticing' one by IQ.

I have yet to see this difference. Most enemies seem to know exactly where I was.

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Well, from a sense standpoint, I'll grant you that mirror knights being able to deflect thrown potions is a bit odd. But changing that opens the door for all kinds of weird corner cases...hobgoblin darter's darts, manticore's spines, as a start. And what about the ice spear spell?

Aren't all these essentially just modified bolts?

And what Ice Spear spell? I only found an Ice Bolt spell.

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I'm certainly willing to concede that the knights may still be too much to handle, even after the 1.2 changes, but I'm generally more in favor of lowering their melee damage (or possibly HP, but I'm guessing the damage is more of a problem) more, rather than pulling something interesting from the game.

Well, in case of Void Knights, maybe you can slow them down? As they are, they are just too fast and the player cannot really prepeare a responce to them in time.

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Reapers don't actually deal damage. There's a reason they're as slow as they are...if they were any faster, they'd be incredibly deadly. As it is, there are still several countermeasures that make them completely harmless.

They produce a death effect. That's why it was able to kill me. I've figured it out since then.

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And running is (almost) always an option.

I usually do that, but in this example, the guy stood in my way.

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Yeah, Ward has never seen a lot of use. Which makes me kind of sad, I think it's a really neat spell. Smile Pacify's chance of succeeding, incidentally, is based on IQ as well, although not in the same way as invis, if I'm remembering right. Is pacify's effect strong enough to justify swapping it with ward?

My suggestion was to increase its strength AND swap it with ward for balance.

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It looks like you're a bit upset about invis, but let me tell you that Invisibility seems pretty fine to me.

How? Every attempt to use the spell, in any situation resulted in death or near-death.

Yes, I'm a little upset about it, because I wasted 3 spell points on a spell that's useless. I expected far more utility from this spell and found it that it had none.

I thought it was Dark version of teleport: you become invisible and by the time it wears off, you are away.

I noticed that its useless for nytomancers too. They constantly use it and quickly re-appear. I don't even usually bother to kill them, they're so pathetic.

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In ver .7 (I think) no creatures could See Invis, so I used it to walk pretty much unscathed all the way to Ath. Check the Beta discussion for the full account.

Well, in that case, it appears that it landed on the other side of the horse.

Zixinus wrote:

- If you use overcharge and raise dead on remains (green dragon in my case), two of the three dragons are hostile. Is this intentional?

Overcharge just causes raise dead to make multiple mobs from one corpse. Each raised mob has the normal chance to be hostile, which is based on IQ. So, yes, it is intentional. Not necessarily right, but intentional.

Zixinus wrote:

- Merge Alien Mentality and Physiology and make the second Cosmic edge the ability to invert on will (call it "Duality" or "Dual Nature" or whatever). As it is, MP regen is just too slow for it to be worth it. Perhaps the two edges could be switched?

MP regen isn't intended to be any use at all in a fight; it's meant to remove the need to return to an energy fountain between each confrontation. So the fact that it is slow is very much by design. And HP regen is an exceedingly strong ability, so I'm reluctant to add anything else to it.

Zixinus wrote:

As promised, some images:

Interesting. Several of those look like they're special rooms...the themed rooms with a really nice reward inside. Does that seem to be the case, in the majority of the dungeon oddities you've encountered? And yeah, I'll fix that trolls line.

Zixinus wrote:

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Well, the logical justification for why IQ has anything to do with it is that it represents the mob picking up subtle clues about your position. Following you by sound, seeing dust disturbed by your footsteps, that sort of thing.

That certainly makes some sense but do you think that it is truly a good realistic choice?

My number one concern is play-balance. As long as there's a vaguely acceptable logic behind it, I'm satisfied.

Zixinus wrote:

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There's definitely a difference between seeing an invisible being and 'noticing' one by IQ.

I have yet to see this difference. Most enemies seem to know exactly where I was.

Well, the way it works is, every time they try to see where you are, they have a chance of doing so, based on IQ. If they fail, they assume you're where they last glimpsed you at. (So standing still is a really bad plan, when you're invisible. ) The only exception to this is if you hit them in melee; that's a free pass to 'notice' where you are, regardless of IQ.

Zixinus wrote:

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Well, from a sense standpoint, I'll grant you that mirror knights being able to deflect thrown potions is a bit odd. But changing that opens the door for all kinds of weird corner cases...hobgoblin darter's darts, manticore's spines, as a start. And what about the ice spear spell?

Aren't all these essentially just modified bolts?

And what Ice Spear spell? I only found an Ice Bolt spell.

Sorry, I meant Ice Bolt. Can never remember what I name things. My point was, if you're arguing that there's no logical basis for mirror knights being able to deflect potions, a physical object being flung at them, then that makes all sorts of other things illogical as well. From an in-game perspective, yeah, they're all bolts, they all function roughly the same way.

Zixinus wrote:

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I'm certainly willing to concede that the knights may still be too much to handle, even after the 1.2 changes, but I'm generally more in favor of lowering their melee damage (or possibly HP, but I'm guessing the damage is more of a problem) more, rather than pulling something interesting from the game.

Well, in case of Void Knights, maybe you can slow them down? As they are, they are just too fast and the player cannot really prepeare a responce to them in time.

Certainly possible.

Zixinus wrote:

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Yeah, Ward has never seen a lot of use. Which makes me kind of sad, I think it's a really neat spell. Smile Pacify's chance of succeeding, incidentally, is based on IQ as well, although not in the same way as invis, if I'm remembering right. Is pacify's effect strong enough to justify swapping it with ward?

My suggestion was to increase its strength AND swap it with ward for balance.

Ahh. I see what you were getting at, now. Yeah, upping the odds of pacify working and then making it a timed effect brings it more into line with the rest of the game's effects, too.

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Interesting. Several of those look like they're special rooms...the themed rooms with a really nice reward inside. Does that seem to be the case, in the majority of the dungeon oddities you've encountered?

Ermn, no. You don't see it right: the images are there to show the weird dungeon construction glitch where you can access hallways trough diagonal movement.

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My point was, if you're arguing that there's no logical basis for mirror knights being able to deflect potions, a physical object being flung at them, then that makes all sorts of other things illogical as well

Don't think "physical object". Think "molotov cocktail".

I'm not arguing that there is no logical basis for them to be immune to them. I'm arguing that this would give a good attack against them for the right price. Death potions are pretty rare later in the game.

Zixinus wrote:

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Interesting. Several of those look like they're special rooms...the themed rooms with a really nice reward inside. Does that seem to be the case, in the majority of the dungeon oddities you've encountered?

Ermn, no. You don't see it right: the images are there to show the weird dungeon construction glitch where you can access hallways trough diagonal movement.

Yeah, I see what you're pointing out. What I'm trying to figure out is the "why" of it. If you look at the first image you posted, for example; there's a block of walls next to the amulet visible in the picture. I'm wondering if that block of walls constitutes one of the special rooms. Those rooms are handled a bit differently from the rest of the dungeon, and I'm thinking that may be what's creating (at least some of) the issues you've encountered.

Zixinus wrote:

I'm not arguing that there is no logical basis for them to be immune to them. I'm arguing that this would give a good attack against them for the right price. Death potions are pretty rare later in the game.

Well, it makes the mirror knights especially weird, but I suppose that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'll play around with it, playtest it a bit. If anyone else has opinions on the subject, btw, feel free to throw them in the ring.

Recently, I've also been fooling around with the Token of Ath.

First that I noticed, that several items were relatively useless.

Shroud of the Fallen especially, as it does the same thing as an Amulet of Undeafication does, only with a longer life-span. Quite useless.

The Cape of Rage (or whatever is that you get with mixing Behemoth remains with a ToA) is also useless, especially considering the fact that a Ring of Titan does the same thing without any negative effects.

I think some of the items need to be re-thought.

For example:

Allow the player with a Shroud of the Fallen to do something that they otherwise can't. For example, make all undead enemies consider you friendly. Or allow you to fly. Anything, just make it do something that's more useful than an Amulet of Undeadification.

The Cape of Rage would be tremendously more useful if it came with an Armour effect to offset the negative effects that Berserk gives.

A token of Ath is hard to come by and it should build items that allow the player to do something they otherwise can't.

For example, the Red Dragon Scale Robe is tremendusly useful, as well as the Ring of Titan that actually allows you to risk meléé later on in the game.

Second, I've once asked for the horn of a white unicorn. I couldn't build from it, so I decided to raise it for giggles.

The game crashed.


Another thing, is that ArchMage duels should be more, for the lack of better term, cinematic. I don't know about Sataja or Luxano, but Mhiu was rather anti-climatic. Just dropped into a room with her. Rather boring. Ath was better, with his three rooms of guards, but wouldn't it make it more interesting if the final room would be surrounded by permanent Wards and Barriers?

I do applaud Nhuz's fight. Very clever, although a few more refreshments on the way would have been nice.

Zixinus wrote:

Recently, I've also been fooling around with the Token of Ath.

First that I noticed, that several items were relatively useless.

No doubt. I definitely don't claim that every buildable item is of equal quality. Now, granted, Shroud of the Fallen and the Vest of Might ought to be pretty decent, simply given the depth and relative power of the critters they come from. There are also a few (in my mind) conspicuous gaps, where mobs that seem like they should work for building don't. I'll see about overhauling the item list for 2.0.

Zixinus wrote:

Second, I've once asked for the horn of a white unicorn. I couldn't build from it, so I decided to raise it for giggles.

The game crashed.

Ahh. Yeah. Will fix.

Zixinus wrote:

Another thing, is that ArchMage duels should be more, for the lack of better term, cinematic. I don't know about Sataja or Luxano, but Mhiu was rather anti-climatic. Just dropped into a room with her. Rather boring. Ath was better, with his three rooms of guards, but wouldn't it make it more interesting if the final room would be surrounded by permanent Wards and Barriers?

I do applaud Nhuz's fight. Very clever, although a few more refreshments on the way would have been nice.

Well, one of my primary goals, when designing the final levels, was to make them distinct from one another. Each level is something of an experiment, in its own way. Mhiu's level is not, perhaps, as successful of an experiment as some of the others. Of all of them, I think I'm least proud of Ath's level, though. It's just kinda...there. There are some improvements I've been considering for several of the levels, Ath and Mhiu especially, for 2.0..

Would it be possible to add powers by wearing items?

Like, with the Shroud to allow summoning undead minions for the right amount of mana (say, ten) or imbue your staff with a Death effect for about three charges (for 6 MP)? That would be very useful.

Or stuff like that, it would be truly interesting.

Neat idea. Anything is possible. I'd have to add quite a bit of code to get that to work, but it would be a very cool addition.