QCF Design Community

These won't be extremely organized or anything, just writing down whatever pops into mind for now.

Preparations: These make the "regular" dungeons Den of Danger/Venture Cave into... actually way easier than freeware DD. Of course, you also need these to win for most of the OTHER dungeons, and I don't know how I feel about that, because I was always under the impression they would give you a boost if you were willing to spend the money rather than being absolutely needed for survival in later dungeons!

Races:
Orcs: Either I'm not understanding what "+1 stacking base damage" means or these guys are actually worse than in the freeware version (where they weren't great.)

Probably still better than...

Dwarves: I was hoping these guys would get some changes since the only one that remained completely the same are Humans and Dwarves, but... well, unless you're playing a Rogue, there's not many situations where extra HP is more helpful vs extra Damage or if you really want HP, then Halflings.

I guess there's a niche that if you raise enemy stats high enough then eventually a dwarf will be the only thing that can hit them more than once without croaking, but eh. These guys aren't exactly living against Bleary the Goat anyway.

Are we going to have racial preparations? Would be a good opportunity to buff these races.

All other races seem fine to me.

Classes: One of the weird things I've noticed is that Berserker, while not a GREAT class in regular DD, is kind of the go-to choice for most of the "puzzle" dungeons. Namtar is difficult with a lot of other races but a complete cakewalk with Berserker, so is the Druid boss, and Berserker is one of the easier classes to do the Avatar quest with.

Meanwhile the Monk is usually one of the stronger classes in the game, gets kind of screwed because just about every stage has a corrosive dude, a weakener, mana-burn/poisoners and other such nasty stuff up the wazoos. Interesting how he beats the Crypt like a red headed stepchild because... guess what, none of those are in that stage! Priest actually kind of struggles at said stage really which is interesting.

I mean, I kind of want to tote around my favourite classes Thief, Sorcerer, Monk out but then I get beat and sigh and choose Berserker again. Hybrid classes don't seem to do very well in the puzzle dungeons right now if you ask me although this might change when Soul Orb gets fixed. Or when new ones get designed I suppose.

Gods:
As a general comment, I'm iffy about trying to balance the gods now because right now with 4 gods and 3 altars we have extremely high consistency in getting god(s) of your choice. Once a bunch of the old gods like Dracul and Earthmother are back to pollute the pool I'm not sure how the balance will stand out.

Mystera: I'm not sure if Mana Leak is overnerfed, whether it was overpowered before, etc.

But I can say that it's probably not Mana Leak that was the problem but more of the fact that Mystera piety gain is highly abuseable in certain situations. A Paladin or a Bloodmage can basically rack up obscene obscene amounts of piety and 50+ mana which they can then use on whatever the heck they want.

A normal play worshipping MA just casting Fireballs or support spells doesn't feel abusive to me, so maybe change the piety rate so that instead of just tying piety gain to number of spells cast, change it to base mana spent instead? That way, casting Byssep, Helpmeh and Lemmisi won't gain you silly piety while it gives an indirect buff to the weaker glyphs like Weytwut and EndIsWall. I say base mana spent so Berserkers won't unintentionally get more piety just because of what is supposed to be their disadvantage.

TT: He still kind of blows. At best, if you add some powerful items to buy people will use him solely for the gold gain... I think. Or maybe as the first candidate to kick over his altar and make fun of him for having a silly name and gaining 25 piety.

Also I'm not sure if Reflexes potion even works. I don't think I'm doing double damage for one hit even after I drank it... that's what it does... right?

I mean, the dodge potion doesn't work for me either, but that's probably because I'm super unlucky.

Potions boon really need to be buffed, dropped in piety cost or not require a conversion.

I mean, Rogue is generally not a great class but it synergizes so well with either of Glowing Guardian or Taurog. TT seems like a rogue-ish sort of god and he doesn't even synergize that well with it!

That's all I can think of now.

Well about the gods...



And yes, he's still pretty nasty.

Huh. That orc bonus should definitely be worded more clearly, from the description I had no idea it does that.

I believe the way the Reflex Potion works is that it gives you a guaranteed retaliation to being hit in the next melee, but this means turn order is important: if the enemy has first strike, they hit you first and your counterattack counts as the "extra attack." But if you have first strike, you attack, the enemy counterattacks, then you counterattack the counterattack. Obviously you won't see any bonuses if you kill the enemy in one hit. It seems to be working for me in that manner.

The one thing I haven't tried is seeing whether this would give you a final attack on something that would kill you (like a weaker version of the Crusader's Martyr special in the old alpha), but that shouldn't matter anyway, since you would still have to leave the dungeon alive to win.