The seasonal greetings

[gjaustin]

Oh, it seems I misunderstood the change. I thought poison blocked a certain amount of regeneration indefinitely (thus 5 stacks of poison would fully-stop regeneration up to 5th level monsters, but not higher). Instead, poison now blocks a certain amount of flat regeneration but is no longer cancelled by attacks.

If that is the case, then this is a pretty harsh nerf to APHEELSIK, largely no change to Tikki's poison, and a fair buff to the venom dagger. Why? Because APHEELSIK is almost exclusively used at the end of an exhaustive attack chain and it's virtually assured it will time out before you've recovered your health and mana. However, the on-attack poisons will stack up 2-3 times during your combat chain and will almost certainly last long enough for you to fully healh. I hope I'm misunderstanding this; will test later.

Actually, that explains why you would need 100 poison stacks from APHEELSIK. So a level 6 character can reveal 6 squares after poisoning a level 10 monster.


It also means that Assassins probably aren't the best casters anymore.

[Lujo]

Actually, i've tested APHEELSICK and TT's Poison just now and here's how it works:

Poison stacks with itself, and negates a total ammount of health that would be regenerated untill you explore a set ammount of tiles (and it notifies you about how many tiles you have left to explore before the monster starts regenerating). It doens't "break" if you attack something else anymore, and for that I'm very, very glad.

APHEELSICK adds 10 poison points per level. It stack with itself.

TT poison adds 10 stacks (fixed, not per level) of poison with every attack. It's abysmal compared to APHEELSICK. It costs 35 piety, and increeses by 10 piety for each hit of it you take. It also means that to use it effectively you need to be out of TT, and it especially means you can't prep TT with it in mind. Essentialy it's like applying a lvl 1 caster APHEELSICK to every attack you make. I feel it got hit too hard this time, and might need to be buffed, either by making it a fixed 25 piety per boon, or upping the ammount of poisonous attack.

How the venom dagger works I have no clue.

[Lujo]

Otherwise I think the changes (GETINDARE, TT poison long overdue nerf, wizard buff) are good for the game. Well, except for the horribly broken Wizard conversion gimmick, that might have been a tad excessive. I'd have settled for losing the damage penalty, but being able to gain infinite piety/potions at lvl 1 is where I draw the line. Not to mention getting almost a glyph worth of piety out of spoons with any wizard.

[Darvin]

I feel it got hit too hard this time, and might need to be buffed, either by making it a fixed 25 piety per boon, or upping the ammount of poisonous attack.

It's now so horrifically front-loaded as to be worthless for high-level characters. I don't see any way this incarnation could possibly be made relevant for high-level characters without making it obscenely overpowered for low-level ones.

I'd have settled for losing the damage penalty, but being able to gain infinite piety/potions at lvl 1 is where I draw the line. Not to mention getting almost a glyph worth of piety out of spoons with any wizard.

I quite like the change, it just needs tweaking to avoid over-the-top effects. Having the effect cap at doubling the base CP of the item would probably do the trick. This would mean for most items you wouldn't need to grab every glyph to get the full effect.

[Lujo]

Agree with your wizard assesment, I ws just being silly because I'm sligtly worried that this won't be fixed in weeks. Well it'll be an exploity couple of weeks, but still, I'd love to test a more "not-broken" incarnation that worked along the same lines.

Well, the Dagger adds 5 poison to your attack, and stacks but has a missleading leftover tooltip. The TT poison couldn't be more overpowered for what it was for most of the year (or ever?), but it could offer more affordable scaling. I'll have to test it, but it looks rather obvious that right now you're paying more than you used to for a fraction of what you used to get. Maybe if buying it simply scaled differently in any way, poison stacks, gold on purchase, piety cost, whatever.

I mean, I was all for a TT poison nerf, spammed about it incessantly, and all that, but I'm pretty sure this needs tweaking. The way it is now it lets you regen a measly one square against anything above lvl 5, and doubles that ammount to whooping 2 squares if you sing 45 more piety into it.

[The Avatar]

You can attack a new monster and the poison won't go away at least.

I think the wizard should just give a glyphs conversion points when you pick it up, but then again, I guess that would disqualify them from hoarder.

Wait, wouldn't TT's poison still be powerful for monks? If you can get two levels that's 20 poison.

You're a level 8 monk in venture cave. The boss does 75 damage. You survive 2 hits. That's 40 poison on the boss, so 64 hp for you. You can do that 6 times. That's 12 hits without the boss regenerating. Not bad.

[Lujo]

Wait, wouldn't TT's poison still be powerful for monks? If you can get two levels that's 20 poison.

You're a level 8 monk in venture cave. The boss does 75 damage. You survive 2 hits. That's 40 poison on the boss, so 64 hp for you. You can do that 6 times. That's 12 hits without the boss regenerating. Not bad.

Yeah, it's still good for high-level monks, but what isnt? It's also good with halpmeh users, but it could still start at as 25 piety, or even lower, and increese by 10 from there. Otherwise I'm fine with the changes - the dagger is a really nice early lvl item now, and all that.

[Dreamdancer]

The venom dagger and TT's poison boon are nice for a melee assassin, since one gets +40% damage.
For other classes it's only a buff for regen-fighting (like burning from fireball), which is the reason why it would help the monk the most.

[xspeedballx]

Do poison stacks decrease if the monster is at full health? If not there could be some interesting setup strategy there for assassins and may actually play up the class flavor some. Spend most of the dungeon stacking up poison on a boss to blow them out later.

[Darvin]

Well, the Dagger adds 5 poison to your attack, and stacks but has a missleading leftover tooltip

So pretty decent for low-level characters (ie, 1st-3rd), but largely worthless as you level up. Probably a net improvement overall, as it is good conversion fodder so buying it early and then selling it once its use has expired should be a viable application, whereas its previous form was relegated to very niche situations where a glass cannon character was going up against glass-cannon enemies.

I think the wizard should just give a glyphs conversion points when you pick it up, but then again, I guess that would disqualify them from hoarder.

Nope; effects that give CP without actually converting stuff do not disqualify you from Hoarder. For instance, chaos avatar gives you 100 CP but doesn't disqualify you from hoarder.


Just did some number-crunching on APHEELSIK... results are not good. I'll reserve final judgment until I get an opportunity to playtest, but it looks like it's been reduced to largely worthless conversion fodder.

In the following math, "L" is your character level and "M" is the monster level. The HALPMEH glyph grants you 4*L hit points for 5 MP, while APHEELSIK allows you to explore a number of tiles for free. The number of tiles it allows you is 10*L/M, and each tile heals L HP, hence it heals 10*L^2/M hit points for 7 MP. Putting aside issues of tile consumption and mana regeneration for the time being, this means HALPMEH offers 0.8*L HP/MP and APHEELSIK offers 1.43*L^2/M HP/MP. If expressed as a ratio, this gives us a HALPMEH:APHEELSIK efficiency ratio of 0.56*M/L. This tells us that if the monster outlevels you by at least 78.5%, then HALPMEH actually offers more healing per MP spent. Furthermore, if it outlevels you more than 43% you're actually spending more mana to maintain the poison than you're regenerating between uses. After spreadsheeting that and considering the more subjective mana and tile use issues, I've concluded APHEELSIK is functionally worthless before level 3 and a pretty horrible use of mana before level 5. It only becomes a competitive glyph much later, around level 8.

Any monster that's actually worth expending tiles over is going to break out of poison too quickly for it to be worthwhile at lower levels. For instance, a 1st level assassin fighting a 3rd level opponent (totally normal opener in a hard-difficulty dungeon) can only explore three tiles before poison times out. It's effectively worthless; he paid 7 MP to regenerate 3 MP and 3 HP, so for a net cost of 4 MP he got 3 HP. HALPMEH offers better without tile consumption.

APHEELSIK remains good at higher levels where the monster:player level ratios are closer. A level 8 player fighting a level 10 monster gets 8 tiles worth of exploration, enough to actually pay for APHEELSIK and regenerate a reasonable amount of health. However, its performance at lower levels is positively abysmal and will virtually never be worthwhile lugging around the entire game. I... think it's been reduced to worthlessness.