Thoughts on Stat Booster Preps

[Darvin]

Health is scaled by level, attack is percentage based and mana is static- I cant see a way around it.

Attack is a %-based multiplier on your base attack, which scales by level. If anything its power grows more substantial on higher-level characters. It's totally analagous to the scaling health bonus, and the only significant discrepency are Orcs or the Trisword, which allow you to raise your multiplier.

Mana doesn't scale by levels, but the spells you cast it with do. BURNDAYRAZ and HALPMEH explicitly are based of your character level. PISORF is based off of base attack, which is pretty much a multiple of your character level. CYDSTEPP, GETINDARE, ENDISWAL, and WEYTWUT are used to get an extra attack against enemies; the effectiveness of your attacks increases as you gain levels. BYSSEPS scales with your base damage, which is based on your level. Both LEMMISI and APHEELSIK are used to leverage health regeneration, which is based on character level.

So I'd argue that both attack bonus and mana naturally scale with levels, even if it's not as explicit as the health boost.

I guess just I enjoy a less min-max style of play, where starting items aren't extreme and provide flavour, rather than advantage.

Then play purist human fighter. That's your tabula rasa. Otherwise, the whole idea of preparations is to improve your overall character standing. That doesn't mean crippling specialization, but it does mean focusing on the most cost-effective way to increase your strength.

I think more double edged preps would be ideal, something i think is reflected in the positive response to the double edged god perks.

To be honest, the only one I use is Binlor and Mystera. Taurog's penalty is also fine and my main beef is with the deity. Otherwise, I always go with +1 altar. Most of these need substantial help and are largely useless in their current state. In principle I think these are great, but the execution was a flop on most of them.

Wouldn't touch Tikki Tooki with a 10 foot pole. Earthmother is a consolation prize in the first place and not worth prepping. Glowing Guardian is extraordinarily painful unless you're going for hoarder, Jehora Jeheyu similarly unless you're going for miser. Taurog is a really situational deity to begin with. You need to find a way to boost your HP to use Dracul effectively, so taking a HP penalty is a deal-breaker.

[The Avatar]

I agree with Darvin, although I actually use JJ as a prep and even for Vicious runs. It really helps to get piety generation going from the get go.

I personally like the suggestions to make them flat stat increases and decreases. It makes things less complicated.

[Darvin]

For JJ, the guy has taken a nerf to petition and piety gain, so the reward for using him isn't nearly as high and the you're taking a lot more punishment to grab petition. All things taken together, he's been seriously nerfed and needs support for piety collection. I'm preferring to convert into JJ from better piety farms. It only takes a little longer to reach 100 with Binlor or Earthmother than it does to reach 50 with Jehora, and you completely skip his punishments that way. Unless I really want WEYTWUT or early worship is paramount to my strategy, I usually hold out on JJ these days.

[The Avatar]

Hmm... I guess. He's still usable, even so.

[Bloggorus]

So I'd argue that both attack bonus and mana naturally scale with levels, even if it's not as explicit as the health boost.

You're right, I'd never looked at it that way. The issue was that they aren't similar enough to make them a straight one for one swap across all three swap preps. The stat glyphs, their use and effects are too complex to balance without many far-reaching changes.

Then play purist human fighter. That's your tabula rasa. Otherwise, the whole idea of preparations is to improve your overall character standing. That doesn't mean crippling specialization, but it does mean focusing on the most cost-effective way to increase your strength.

I don't see why all classes shouldn't be playable as a blank slate. If a class requires a series of preps to be effective, or at least to be as effective as other classes, then they require a change.

Specialisation implies a focus on one thing at the expense of another. I was implying that the stat swap preps are an excellent example of this, despite being a little unbalanced, and that they shuld be used as an example for other preps.

This ties into a bigger issue of stacking benefits from preps leading to runaway strats.

At the moment, many preparations are straight benefits to a character, like the conversion scrolls, bezaar, the item locker and even the blacksmith (although few bother with most of those). These benefits come only at the cost of grinding. Edit: also inventory space, although that's not permanent and provides conversion points.

So the 'trade-off', or the risk-reward system in place for those preps, has no effect in-game, or to any overall meta-game, and is probably a source of a large amount of imbalance.

For other preps like the swap glyphs, the gods and theif preps like patches and the den, a gold cost is attached but they also have an in-game tradeoff.

[Joist]

If a class requires a series of preps to be effective, or at least to be as effective as other classes, then they require a change.

Effective in which dungeon? This would be literally impossible to balance, or even agree on a theoretical way of balancing.

Should they be balanced for purist or for preps? Transmuter Orcs got their fingers slapped for being incredibly good with preps but even before the nerf they really sucked as purist.

For other preps like the swap glyphs, the gods and theif preps like patches and the den, a gold cost is attached but they also have an in-game tradeoff.

The god preps have always bugged me. By not choosing +1 altar you get the gods specific punishment but you also incur an opportunity cost of having -1 altar. So basically prepping any god is (god specific punishment and -1 altar).

[Darvin]

I don't see why all classes shouldn't be playable as a blank slate. If a class requires a series of preps to be effective, or at least to be as effective as other classes, then they require a change.

Unless your class traits are extremely generic (fighter), you will be predisposed to prefer certain glyphs, items, or approaches. Rogues due to their high damage and low health will naturally like CYDSTEPP, monks with their high resistances and low damage will not. Unless you want to literally remove what makes these classes special, each of them will have their own unique predisposition. Players will choose preps that complement that predisposition, compensating for weaknesses and magnifying strengths. That doesn't mean they are necessary, just that they happen to be favourable in this circumstance.

Certain characters will always prefer HP->Attack, simply because attack damage is so valuable for them whereas maximum HP (at least in the magnitude we're talking about) is not. The problem with the other booster swaps is that they just weren't good enough so very few characters ever had a good reason to take them. If they got buffed to the 2 for 1 swap I proposed then that might be different.

This ties into a bigger issue of stacking benefits from preps leading to runaway strats.

The devs have been pretty good at balancing runaway strats.

At the moment, many preparations are straight benefits to a character, like the conversion scrolls, bezaar, the item locker and even the blacksmith (although few bother with most of those). These benefits come only at the cost of grinding.

Lost me there. How do preps cause me to grind? If anything they allow me to run specific strategies without grinding.

[gjaustin]

At the moment, many preparations are straight benefits to a character, like the conversion scrolls, bezaar, the item locker and even the blacksmith (although few bother with most of those). These benefits come only at the cost of grinding.

Lost me there. How do preps cause me to grind? If anything they allow me to run specific strategies without grinding.

I suspect he means that for those of us who've been playing for a while, preps don't even make a dent in our cash. Even when creating a new profile, I usually have enough money to go full preps around the time I unlock the Hard dungeons.

But for those people starting fresh, preps can be really expensive when you fail a dungeon.

[Bloggorus]

Players will choose preps that complement that predisposition, compensating for weaknesses and magnifying strengths

My issue with this is that some preps compensate for weaknesses but don't reduce strength elsewhere, or vice versa. Players will always choose the most favourable prep option, especially if there is no cost attached to the choice.

The balance and difficulty of every unique dungeon is based on a series of parameters- layout, type of monsters, boss type, random shops and spawns. These features are static and exist within a closed system.

Each class will be uniquely predisposed to deal with these dungeons, although at this point the player is given no indication how different classes 'rate' with different dungeons. Berserkers will always stomp magic heavy dungeons, rogues will stomp low hp bosses and monks will dominate in dungeons will lots of explorable area and few debuff monsters.

Figuring out which class to tackle a dungeon with has always been a factor of the game. The challenge is to take them down with classes that aren't designed for it.

However, with preps you can drastically inflate the resources available to the player, from the outset of the game, and heavily inflate the overall resources in the dungeon due the beginning advantage.

The dragon shield, for instance, represents many points of piety, explored tiles and monster killing to aquire by conventional means in-game. But for a few gold, you can carry it into battle with no in-game cost, and no compensatory reduction in the overall level of resources in the game. For any class, in any dungeon, it is an absolute advantage, of the game breaking kind. Any prep that only costs gold is the same.

Long story short- some preps blatantly corrupt the sanctity of the in-game economy by introducing outside influences. Theres probably a real world example involving third world nations but i cant think of one now.