Miscellaneous Update

I have been a bad developer, and have not posted recently. Part of this is due to things going on in my life, but more of it is due to lack of incentive on my part. I seem to have cyclical swings, and if I follow the historical pattern I should come out of it here in a week or so. But enough about my problems, let's talk about the game!

Of the major events recently, I'd say the biggest two are quicker movement regen, and the str/dex changes. The movement regen change is really only a net improvement of about 25%, but the important part is that it regens on every prompt instead of every tick. For new players, this is absolutely critical; nothing sucks more than being one step away from a safe room and unable to walk there for the 30 seconds it takes for another tick to hit. It changes the newbie game from a 'move a few squares then rest for 30 seconds' kind of game to a 'move more slowly through a few squares and look at stuff' kind of game. It's definitely more pleasant for me when I'm playing, and I've gotten similar remarks from pretty much everyone else.

Strength and dex are another matter. Several very vocal people have already complained, though since I was expecting it, it bothers me less than it initially did. It also helps that nearly everyone who is complaining has already figured out how to change equipment with the least amount of damage. There are also a handful of people who dislike the change because they feel it hurts their characters, but at the same time see the logic behind it and support it. In their view, it affects everyone equally, so it's fair if nothing else.

I only put in the first stage of str/dex in this last update. This limits the spells to +6 and widens the range of boosting to +8, flat across the board. (It used to be +5 or higher depending on how low your natural stat was.) In February, I plan to lower the limit to +5, and in may to +4. I don't think I'll raise the boost range, as it seems to me that +8 is probably sufficient. I'll have to collect more information on this going forward.

One minor change which is actually pretty major is a sort of 'freak' multiplier for randoms. It's just a single line in the changelog, but it's actually a pretty big deal from an equipment standpoint - it's like getting a really kick-ass unique in games like Diablo II. There's four different levels with about a 1 in 8 chance for each successive level. Each level adds 30 composite points to the total, so if you get all four (about one in 4000 odds), you can add nearly 4 hit/dam to the total of the object. Of course, odds are good you'll end up with most of the points going elsewhere, but it basically allows for 'super' random objects to appear from time to time. I don't think this will break the game, as it will be much harder to accumulate sets, and it's much more likely to happen on bound equipment.

Fighters and stats

I was looking at some warrior characters and the issues that they have to deal with this morning, and I have come up with an indecent proposal on how to change strength and dexterity so as to make them 'more interesting' and more useful. This came about due to recent changes to the strength and dexterity spells, which screw warriors and thieves harder than I had expected.

Part of the reason strength and dexterity have come out so low on the equipment totem pole is that there are spells to compensate for it. Why should a builder bother to build equipment with strength and dex on it, when those valuable composite points could instead be used on stats like int and wis? After all, you can just use the int and wis to cast and maintain strength and dex spells.

With this in mind, consider the following two changes:

1) Limit strength and dexterity spells to a maximum of +4 boost.

2) Raise the boosting limit for strength and dexterity on equipment to +10. If you want 30 strength, you only need a natural 20 to do it, if you wear strength boosting equipment. Spells alone can only bring to to 24.

As an example, you could have 20 natural strength, add 6 through equipment, and 4 through spells to get 30 strength to wield a special sword.

Again, the reason for this is primarily to change the way that builders build equipment. The strength and dexterity stats on equipment are ill-favored, because they're so easy to replace with spells. Allowing stats to be able to do something that the spells cannot should tip this balance.

The only down side of this is that it will take some time for this to percolate through the equipment lists, and it will take time for equipment to be updated. In the short term to help bridge that gap, I would propose that the spells be limited to +5 instead of +4, with a temporarily lower casting cost. After 3-6 months the limit would be lowered to +4, and the casting cost slowly raised back up after that.

Any feedback on how you think this might be broken would be appreciated.