Beta update: Kingdom renovation crew

[q 3]

The change to Quicksilver Potions should make them actually useful now (much less useful for Rogues and probably also Assassins than for other classes, since it's harder for them to game, but still a good item all around). I think the Fire Heart is probably just about perfect, too. And I am very happy with the new locker reclamation - it's especially nice for Sensation Stones. Now I feel like the Insurance prep should give you +100 gold for every item lost, allowing the player to commit insurance fraud.

I tried out the new Treasure Chest preparation, but one of the chests gave me a blank dialogue box. I think it might have reduced by HP to 1?

From what I can tell, these are the new deity punishments:

Mystera +15% phys & magic resist to all enemies
Tikki Tooki first strike & weakening added to all enemies
Taurog -40% attack bonus
Dracul -20 max HP (still no effect at 1 max HP)
Binlor reduces player's phys & mag resist by 50% (doesn't seem to affect maximums)
Glowing Guardian removes all items, including locker items

Mystera joins GG as a deity who you should now never, ever piss off 99% of the time regardless of your strategy. Tikki Tooki is also a lot harsher, but his penalty can still be mostly ignored by spellcasters. Binlor goes from having a nasty punishment to having one that you can shrug off with 10/13 classes as long as you're careful about when you desecrate. Dracul is harsher at lower levels but still subject to abuse by spellcasters and CYDSTEPPers. Taurog is slightly less harsh than before, but subject to the same rule: spellcasters can ignore it, fighters should avoid except in very rare circumstances.

[fall_ark]

Under the current nerf, I'd suggest that Poison doesn't automatically removes itself when you attack another monster. It ain't much of an abuse anyway.

Or maybe APHEELSIK can apply *layers* of poison on a monster, while the Venom Blade only applies one. That'd be a nice change!


The Teddy isn't all that useful, considering that there's maybe 80% of a negative effect(Poison, Mana burn, Teleporting around, Revealing Tiles). Kind of like the golden chest preparation. -- Sure it might be useful and in some circumstances the the gains outweighs the losses. But bad things are guaranteed to happen, so meh.

[Darvin]

I tend to agree that APHEELSIK was overnerfed. It was the venom sword that was overpowered. APHEELSIK, if anything, was underpowered due to its high mana cost and inability to reliably work against magic resist enemies. The smuggler's den seems about right now.


The problem I have with deity punishments is that they're either meaningless or gamebreaking with no in between. Deity penalties are currently very narrow (with the exception of GG and updated Mystera, which are so crazy that they may as well not even have a "desecrate" button on their alters) but very deep. This means that if they hit you in an attribute you need, you can never desecrate them, but if they don't there's virtually no penalty to desecrating them.

Personally, I think Taurog and Mystera are now wasted alters for way too many classes that can never desecrate them, but also have no use for their boons (though I suppose they're still good piety farms... but when I see something like Taurog/Mystera/Binlor I usually resign myself to playing atheist)


I think something needs to give with the Transmuter. He was an extremely weak class if you didn't have Rock Heart available as a preparation or (preferably and) Binlor available for early worship. Now he's a total joke. The class needs to begin with rock heart in his inventory; you shouldn't need a specific preparation to make a class viable.

[FDru]

The penalties are fine, IMO. You desecrate them when you need that last bit of piety for something important, and that's probably how it should be.

With the heretic prep you get a completely free desecration now, anyway. Sure, you risk destroying an important altar but that's a small price to pay for the benefit. Though I wonder if they should have replaced the +10 piety prep with heretic instead of the scout boss...

[Darvin]

[subanark]

I seem to be losing the patches preperation every time I take it, requiring I spend another 100G to get it back.
Here is my results from using Patches
-poison +3 max health
-random teleport +1 max mana
-reveal squares +3 max health
-teleport +4% resists
-?(double level) +3 max health
-poison +5% attack
-nothing +nothing
-teleport +3 max health
-nothing +nothing
-mana burn +4% resists
GG boon helps to get rid of debuffs

[q 3]

Yeah, APHEELSIK is over-nerfed and Assassins are really feeling it - even in the normal difficulty dungeons, it's pretty difficult to kill something more than one level higher than you with poison without so much extra gear that you could kill them just as easily without poison. A big part of the problem is that Assassins just can't out-regenerate anything, not like Monks, Warlords, Berserkers, etc. can - they don't hit hard and they don't have any defenses, so if their HP regen is similar to the enemy's, the higher level enemy will usually outdo them with more damage dealt per attack. I like fall_ark's suggestion of making APHEELSIK add multiple layers of poison with repeated casting, and would probably also decrease the cost of the glyph to around 5 MP. You wouldn't even need to have a hard distinction between APHEELSIK and the Venom Sword for this purpose, since the Venom Sword would remove any existing layers of poison anyway due to the damage you deal upon attack (while APHEELSIK would be able to stack since it does no damage). The price of the Venom Sword and the cost of Tikki Tooki's boon should probably also be decreased a bit to reflect their diminished usefulness.

It seems badges are scored out of 15 total now, though I haven't seen any new ones yet.

[Troggle]

I agree that allowing multiple layers of APHEELSIK could work, or at the very least drop its mana cost significantly.

Also, since the update it seems the game's been refusing to save class completions for me. I can still win dungeons just fine and get the gold and items (I finally managed to grab Namtar's Ward) but it's made quests like Minecraft impossible and it hasn't logged the various classes in the Completion thing for non quest dungeons. It also hasn't saved if I pay for one of the new preparations, although it sounds like several other people have been having issues with that.

The new locker preparation system is kind of neat. And patches is an entertaining preparation. I think the god's retributions are still a tad uneven. I can't imagine ever wanting to desecrate GG, while I'd trash Binlor's altar on sight most of the time. (PS. I miss the Pactmaker. Any chance he'll show up in the beta at some point?)

[Darvin]

They did a blog post on the Pactmaker a while back:

http://www.qcfdesign.com/?p=524

Basically a totally different god. I miss Earthmother; massive gamble, but if you got stoneform at level 1 or 2 you'd be practically invincible by level 5 or 6. Jehora was a fun fallback, too. Wonder which one we'll get next.

[Troggle]