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[Max White]

Yea it is pretty sexy... Until you run into things that are immune to fire. That was also a fun way to die.

[beorn080]

Max out acid infusion. I'm 99% sure that it converts the heat damage into acid damage, though it doesn't add on the on damage bonus's or the bonus damage. Honestly, the last two skills in it seem kinda meh compared to theme. Change the third tier to Catalytic Acceleration, which crashes the DOTs on a mob, but only does 50% of the damage. At level 4, it increases radius of effect to 1, so that it can hit multiple targets, and levels otherwise decrease cooldown. Tier 4 would be a passive, giving a 10-40%ish chance for heat to spread and possibly stack, though not on targets that it started from, called Chain Reaction. In other words, you cast heat on a Ritch and smokebomb it, spreading the heat to a rat. Each turn, there would be a low chance for the heat to spread to the other, assuming they are close together, but not back to the original carrier.

[Max White]

Speaking of alchemy... When the guys ask me to go out and get stuff for their potions because they hate shopping and mention to be quick about it, am I actually on a time limit, or flavor text?

[Frumple]

Not really. Closest thing to a time limit is that a random potion besides the one you turn in will be completed every time you turn the ingredients in (though it won't double-tap the one you help out that time, o'course.). When someone finishes their set (which can be as few as three turned in or as many as... five or six, I forget what the upper limit is.), then you can turn in no more.

[Max White]

Ah, I see... So I should try to focus on spreading out my efforts over all the alchemists so that one doesn't pull ahead.
Also, do you work on the game yourself Frumple? You mentioned coding before...

[Frumple]

Nah. I've contributed a little bit in terms of code (note: I'm freaking terrible at coding) and helped a bit more intensely than your average player with testing, bug hunting, and design discussion at varying points, but nothing even remotely substantial. Most of the code on the corpsebow was me, I mangled the code for the femur so horrifically DG couldn't stand looking at it and made something functional from it, and I contributed an idea or two that someone else did the work on (Such as the mentioned Umbraphage -- original idea was me, fixed up and made more sane by... PureQuestion, iirc.), but that's about it. Mostly I just spend bouts of time where I hang around the IRC and guinea pig stuff or throw in a $0.02 here and there.

Sometimes I even throw in a two cent worth something

[Max White]

I was just thinking somebody could make a significant improvement to escort quests by adding a disposition value.
Right now it seems that you can command your escort to stay still for a while, but only once, and this can sort of such when you get escorts on boss levels.
If instead your escort had a disposition towards you and following orders would drain that disposition, while seeing you kill monsters would cause it to rise, then at least harder levels are still skill based rather than RNG.
The code for all the behaviors is already in game, all you need is an int value to figure out what to do for a given command, either obey or loose their nerve and run for the portal like a loony straight into a boss.

[Frumple]

S'what the ideas subforum or an addon's for

Particularly the latter, if it comes to that. There hasn't been much traction for changes to the escort quests in that sort of direction, really. DG seems pretty content to have them fairly heavily RNG based. General word of God has been you're more or less intended (i.e. get RNG screwed) to fail a few, and they're not exactly necessary. I'm fairly sure one of my old winners ended up saving none of them or like two or three or something.

Plus it's not like those crazy bastards in the infinite dungeon don't get buggers down to the hundreds or whatever without any escorts whatsoever, and ID is viciously more difficult than the standard campaign overall. You could strip the escorts out entirely without meaningfully changing the game's balance too much, really. They're just a nice bonus. Outside of undead being a little more annoying at times. Light tree's pretty sexy on 'em.

That kind of mechanic sounds like it'd be more interesting for a pet class of some sort, though. There was an attempt at a marshal or captain or something class a long ways back which was pretty interesting but never really panned out much

[nenjin]

The escorts, even in normal mode, are frustrating. Sometimes your ward acts semi-rationally, moving away from enemies...and other times I've watched them plunge head first into a pack of enemies for no reason.

[RedKing]

Had a Higher Sun Paladin turn out WAY better than expected. Like, halfway through Dreadfell before I had my first death. Unfortunately, he followed that up with ALL his deaths to a randboss. 


Playing around with a Ghoul Reaver. S'fun. Tough initially because no good way to heal, but once I get up enough to put points into that one Reaving Combat skill that heals you a small bit every time you do damage it was tolerable. Plus life regen items. Then when you get Retch, it's better than most regen infusions at that point.

Soooooo much blight damage. No good way to get rid of negative conditions though.

[Dr Feelgood]

I was just thinking somebody could make a significant improvement to escort quests by adding a disposition value.
Right now it seems that you can command your escort to stay still for a while, but only once, and this can sort of such when you get escorts on boss levels.
If instead your escort had a disposition towards you and following orders would drain that disposition, while seeing you kill monsters would cause it to rise, then at least harder levels are still skill based rather than RNG.
The code for all the behaviors is already in game, all you need is an int value to figure out what to do for a given command, either obey or loose their nerve and run for the portal like a loony straight into a boss.

Actually, the "wait" command has a cooldown (12 turns?).

My recent winner lost about half the escorts, due to most of them being generated in Dreadfell and surrounded by enemies at the start. It's even worse in nightmare, since everything in Dreadfell can kill them faster.

[Robsoie]

escorts are extremely stupid , how much of them i lost because for some insane reason they have been rushing into what was an obvious death while they could have easily just waited behind me in "that corridor from which nothing could come to threaten them" ...

If the bonus given was negligable, ok maybe they're a joke, but the bonuses they give can really help so losing them due to those stupid behaviour is not exactly what i would call fun.

In other words, looks like the Orcs patrol can still one-shot your character to death, as they just did my ghoul bulwark level 32 :

Armour (hardiness)   120.26 (95%)
Defense   40.97
Ranged Defense   45.97
Fatigue   53
Physical Save   51.65
Spell Save   47.433333333333
Mental Save   21.425

Acid   + 21%( 70%)
Blight   + 32%( 70%)
Physical   + 27%( 70%)
Cold   + 58%( 70%)
All   + 15%( 70%)
Lightning   + 70%( 70%)
Light   + 40%( 70%)
Temporal   + 19%( 70%)
Fire   + 52%( 70%)
Nature   + 32%( 70%)

That is not too shabby as protections, but still 1060 health destroyed in 1 turn by that orc patrol.
I simply enabled my 300+ shield , then phase door-ed  , landed near the exit, moved 1 tile toward it ... character dead.

And that without a single orc being an elite, so what the hell ?
Looking at the log, i noticed a big bunch of 260 acid damage attacks.

 ... when that game wants to kill your character, it will kill him whatever strong and resistant he can be.

[Graven]

With the completely random way the game creates Rare enemies in enough time your character's perfect antagonist is bound to appear. From my experience with the more difficult classes "enough time" translates to about 5 floors 

Also ever since escorts started running away from enemies I'm founding them a lot more annoying. Just... just stop running god damn stay in place when I tell you what is wrong with you

[Robsoie]

I think i would really hate playing ToME4 in roguelike difficulty, with only 1 life and those one-turn death situation due to the randomness of the enemy generations, it must be an extremely frustrating experience.

[Repulsion]

I've played around 60 characters, all on roguelike, and none have made it to Dreadfell, heh. Many were just getting killed by a slightly out of depth enemy in the first dungeon, and the ones that got past level 10 were usually felled either by adventurers, or rares/uniques in either the OF, Daikara, or the Sandworm lair.

I suppose I should try adventurer mode some more, but we'll see...