Tuesday now and I still lack a working internet connection. I hope my RuneScape clan is doing okay without me poking the clan citadel. Meanwhile I used my Kindle to check on the new Weekly Dredmor Challenge on reddit. Then I spent all day playing said challenge, ultimately scoring more than 1.1m points before dying to a succession of heavy-damage unresistable spells from the boss man himself.

I am not cut off completely. I can still write my blog albeit text only. I can check my email. The most important stuff is still available if much slower. However, I am more or less unable to edit TV Tropes, so my watchlist will probably get pretty backed up. And I have given up on keeping up with Twitter like this. That is too much to ask.

Tomorrow I plan to go out and run a few errands while I have nothing better to do. I need to grab a few groceries and just generally familiarize myself with the neighborhood.

The eyebrows...the eyebrows...!

I'm currently on the sixth level of my latest Dungeons of Dredmor run. I got tired of random skillsets. This time, I wanted to play as a rogue. An honest-to-goodness rogue with traps and crossbows and stuff. So my skills are Daggers, Crossbows, Burglary, Archaeology, Tinkering, Big Game Hunter, and Piracy.

The first time I used Tinkering, I ended up with a million zillion crossbow bolts and I could plink away at all the enemies from a distance and it was pretty awesome. For this run, I wanted to do that. So I took Tinkering, to make crossbows and bolts, and Crossbows, to make my shots stronger and recover more ammo. Burglary helps a lot with this plan as well--it has a teleport, which lets me jump away from enemies to get in crossbow hits, and it has Lockup, which chains an enemy in place so they can't fight back when I attack from a distance.

I tried Daggers when the expansion first came out, and I thought it was a cool skill. It's got stances that give huge boosts to counterattacks or critical chance. I was hoping I could use those. Unfortunately, that plan hasn't been working out, since there just aren't any daggers! I can't find any good ones. So that's been an underwhelming skill so far.

I took Big Game Hunter cuz...I dunno. Butchery, pretty much. Free meat. I put a point into that early on and it was pretty helpful in the early levels--some bonus xp from collecting trophies, and some bonus food from butchering animals. By this point I've got a better handle on things and I don't need the food or the teeny xp boosts, but I've been turning the extra meat into Lutefisk For The Lutefisk God and using some of it to apply a tasty meat glaze to my armor for bonus HP.

I don't remember why I picked Piracy. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I went for most of the game not getting any use out of it at all. Then I found a crafting recipe for the Mace of Windu, which uses amethyst gems. Okay, that's a combo. Piracy gives you free gems whenever you kill enemies; normally, gems like amethysts are rare, but pirates can plunder them all over the place. So suddenly I had a neverending supply of Maces of Windu. Which, by the way, are all artifacts. So now I can use Archaeology to send them to the museum for about 4000 xp. (THAT'S A LOT.)

Anyway, so far so good.

Golemancy

I'd say Golemancy is one of the most powerful skills in Dungeons of Dredmor.

Okay, you start out with a crappy first spell. Animate Blade Being is a mine that does a small amount of slashing damage if an enemy steps on it. It's awkward to use and not really worth the trouble. But you're not taking Golemancy for the damage spells. No, Golemancy is the ultimate defensive skill.

Level 2: Animate Mustache. Summons a mustache golem to fight alongside you. Here is a tip for you golemancers out there: for your first level-up, get the mustache golem. Mustache golems dominate the early game. Summon one golem and it can singlehandedly clear out the entire first and second floors (Zoo and all), hold its own on the third, and still be a valuable distraction for the fourth. Just like that. It's like a free pass.

Level 3: Unliving Wall. One word: overpowered. Unliving Wall allows you to create a wall at any location. Point, click, and shoom: instant blockade covering that square (and knocking back any enemy standing there). Being able to block off enemies from reaching you at will for only 3 mana is insanely strong. How are you going to die when you can wall yourself off from all the enemies and effectively become invincible? You can drop walls to create a choke point so enemies have to come at you one at a time (or force them to step on your traps). You can wall off a Monster Zoo completely and drop thaumites on them to sweep the whole room without taking any damage. You can just put four walls on each side of yourself and stand there in your mini-fortress while you digest some food to heal up. Basically, it's near-game-breakingly insane.

Then you get Invive Thaumite Swarm. What this does is it targets an enemy, and that enemy gets swarmed by thaumites, dealing damage over time. Then, several turns later, the thaumites leave their target and drop to the ground, where they'll go on to attack anything else that steps on them. A single swarm can spread to multiple enemies and potentially infect the whole room. It's reasonably potent, although it costs a lot of mana and there are a fair amount of enemies that resist the damage. The nice thing is you can do it even if there's a wall in the way, so you can drop four walls around an enemy, infect them with some thaumites, and let the bugs do the rest while they're trapped in your cage. And of course, for Monster Zoos, you can hide behind a wall and drop thaumites on the other side, which, on lower floors, is quite effective. Spells like Miasmic Putrefaction (from Fleshsmithing) or Tactical Pyre (from Promethean Magic) do this a little better, but thaumites have the advantage of being built-into the same skill tree as Unliving Wall, for your convenience.

The Mortal Machine is next. It summons a robo dude to fight for you. This guy is like a stronger version of the mustache golem. If you keep upgrading your Golemancy level, you can rely on your familiars to cover almost all of your combat for a pretty solid portion of the dungeon. The Mortal Machine can singlehandedly escort you safely as far as floor 7 or so, making a large portion of the game a cakewalk. As you get deeper, it'll become outclassed and you'll need to start pulling your weight, but until then you're essentially in easy mode.

Lastly, the final skill is Digging Ray. I really don't like this spell. What it does is it's a big beam that you point in a direction to destroy all the walls in its path. So you can cut a path, or whatever. Thing is, it costs approximately a zillion mana to use. I've never felt like I needed it. I guess the idea is you bust an escape route through the wall, block it off with an Unliving Wall to cover your retreat, and then skedaddle from whatever scary boss monster is troubling you.

Oh, and I guess I should mention that all golemancers start with a Golemancer's Cap, which gives +1 block, +1 stubbornness (equivalent to half a point of block and half a point of magic resistance), and +1 aethereal resistance. This is fairly weak, but it's free and it's better than nothing.

Overall, Golemancy is pretty busted. You get to have beefy golems do all your fighting for you, and you can drop walls wherever you like. It can work well in almost any build--just pump a level into Animate Mustache early on to sweep the early floors, pump another level into Unliving Wall to sweep everything else, and even if you never touch the skill again it'll be worth it. If you do want to max it out, I recommend doing so fairly quickly, since you'll want to get to that Mortal Machine ASAP to get the best mileage out of it.

I just finished another Dungeons of Dredmor run. This time I played on Elvishly Easy mode because I wanted it to be quick. Mostly I just wanted to try out the combo of Wand Lore + Piracy, and, as a secondary goal, to get the "It Has A Knob On The End" achievement for maxing out the Staff skill.

So my skillset was Staves, Dual Wielding, Perception, Alchemy, Wand Lore, Rogue Scientist, and Piracy. And it worked okay, I guess, although to be honest the melee skills were a little underwhelming. I think the only good thing about Staves is the chance to stun. None of the other bonuses or abilities are really very good.

Perception is definitely much, much better in the new build. It now spawns loot when you kill enemies, which is pretty sweet. It combos well with crafting skills, since it's a source of supplies.

I never actually leveled up Piracy, because I only really took it for Plunder, which makes enemies drop gems when you kill them. Free gems means easy wandcrafting! I was able to easily craft fire wands, icicle wands, pearlescent wands...basically all the wands, and very early on, despite being on No Time To Grind mode with fewer resources on each floor. And of course, crafting two of the same wand means you can get infinite charges out of them by stacking and un-stacking them together, so I got lots and lots of wand charges.

Rogue Scientist is the same deal as Piracy. I only really took it for the Salvage Ooze ability, for free alchemical ooze to turn into brimstone and salt for wands.

Alchemy rounded it out to help me make some of the ingredients for wands, but in retrospect I think I could have done fine with just the alchemy boost from Rogue Scientist.

Anyway, I took the character all the way down to the bottom floor and when I opened a door, Lord Dredmor popped right out into my face and hit me for a bunch of damage! I tried to drink a healing potion, but he used a Fulminaric Bolt spell to hit me for 63 damage and basically I just died. So, looks like I got the "It's MY Dungeon" achievement for getting killed by Dredmor. Oh well.

Today I played Dungeons of Dredmor. I ran with a random skillset on the highest difficulty with permadeath on. And I made it to floor 11 before getting killed by a boss monster in a Monster Zoo.

I had Berserker Rage, Artful Dodger, Viking Wizardry, Fungal Arts, Wand Lore, Squirtle, and Magikarp. It was...not that great. Berserker Rage, Magikarp, and Squirtle made my melee pretty decent, although Squirtle felt a little underpowered; I think I need to tweak the numbers on it. I feel like Blastoise should learn Mirror Coat. Wand Lore actually turned out to be pretty good because I found out there is a bug with it--if you make your own wands, they can stack together in your inventory, and splitting the stack resets the charges. So basically, infinite wand charges. I got to abuse coral wands for infinite food. It was nice. Probably a bug, but Wand Lore is so painfully bad otherwise that I'm not about to complain. Gyarados wasn't the worst--good stat boosts and Hyper Beam did some work. Changing it to scale better helped a lot. Hyper Beam's blasting damage now scales with the Crit stat, and the conflagratory damage scales with the Haywire stat, and it's 1:1 for both of them.

If I hadn't had it on the 15-floor version, I could have killed Dredmor on floor 10 instead of dying on floor 11. Not only would I have gotten the coveted "Left for Dread" achievement for beating GRPD, but I would have gotten "I Can't Believe That Worked" for doing it with a random skillset. I guess it wasn't to be. Not today.

I did really well, though. The latest patch made the lower floors a lot easier on melee characters. I was terrified to go hand-to-hand with Muscle Diggles because they used to hit constant unblockable, uncounterable, undodgeable crits for like 40 damage. But under the new game mechanics, critical hits don't automatically override all your defenses, so you can still block or counter them.

So it was an encouraging run, if ultimately unsuccessful, and I expect I'll try again in the near future.

I've been holding off on my Phyrexia mod for Dungeons of Dredmor because a. I've been waiting for the new patch to come out and b. I haven't actually played much Dredmor lately.

I had a completed version of the mod already, except it broke. I have no idea why. I can't find any errors in the code that I recognize. It just stopped working; dunno what I changed. So I guess I'll have to start from scratch.

The first skill is Infect. It passively makes all your attacks give the target a -1/-1 counter (gives -1 melee power and -1 HP). Seems okay, right?

I want to have Living Weapon allow you to sacrifice a piece of equipment to summon a robot familiar. I'm not actually sure how to do that, but I think it's possible with the new patch. I've never done a minion skill, though. Trial and error, I guess?

Somewhere along the line is Proliferate. I think I want it to be a curse that lasts a super-long time and gives a -1/-1 counter every turn. So like you target them once and their death is inevitable. That's flavorful, right?

And there'll be Phyrexian Mana, which is a straight-up simple buff, reducing your life but boosting your Savvy and mana regen.

Four skills does not a skill tree make, though, so I'm thinking I want Phyrexian Obliterator as a skill. It should trigger a damaging blast around you when you get hit. Beyond that I haven't decided the specifics.

And then maybe cap it off with Yawgmoth's Will, or Yawgmoth's Bargain, one of the classic broken Phyrexian powerhouses. Except I have no idea what they do.

Oh, and I should mention that you start off with a Contagion Clasp hat, which clings to your face and reduces your stubbornness and sight range but boosts toxic/putrefying damage and sneakiness.

That's what I have so far. I dunno if it's any good. Maybe it's not even worth the trouble. I'll think about it some more.

Hack, Slash, Loot, and Indie Gala 4

I finally finished my scheduled hour's worth of Hack, Slash, Loot. I just can't stop dying in this game.

I did finally manage to get a character to the second level, though! This archer guy found an enchanted pair of boots that regenerates HP, which apparently is game-breakingly absurd because normally you have so much HP and it basically never goes back up (you can find healing items but they're uncommon), but with regenerating health, all those minor injuries that would otherwise chip away at you until you're dead just get shrugged off completely.

Then I got poisoned. Poison is the opposite of regenerating health. If you get poisoned, you're screwed because unless there's a healing item within a few rooms of where you're standing right now, you are stone dead and there's nothing you can do about it. Since I had regenerating health, though, they canceled each other out until I could find a cure.

I beat the boss of the second level, some dwarf king guy, and then I went to level 3...

...and I got dogpiled by some Orcs and Uruk-Hai and they busted through my regeneration enough to kill me. So my archer is dead.

This game is frustrating because it feels like I have no control over what happens. Everything is blind luck. Hit or get hit in combat? All controlled by a roll of the dice. Get poisoned? Sorry, you're dead and there's nothing you could have done. Find a power-up? You got randomly lucky, good job. You can't stockpile items to save for a rainy day because there's no inventory system. You can't do anything meaningful to affect combat because you only have one attack and one set of gear. All you can do is cross your fingers and pray. I keep dying and having no idea what I possibly could have done differently. A couple times I died in the first room, to the enemy who spawned a few steps away. What exactly did the game expect me to do?

Is there any reason to play this when I could be playing Dungeons of Dredmor instead? Dredmor has deep, varied gameplay, far more appealing visuals, a more sensible combat system, a satisfying level-up mechanic, customizability through game mods (which I even know how to make myself, if I want to)...this game is just worse in basically every way. And by the way, worth noting, they're the same price in the Steam store.

I'm going to have to disapprove of this game. It could be worse, I guess, but I like it less each time I try it. I just feel like I have no control over the outcome of the quest.

Anyway, the Indie Gala 4 is out. I paid the minimum price for it. The beat-the-average games didn't look very interesting. There was some multiplayer airplane-dogfighting-thing which I doubt I would have ever played, and some strategy-type game or something...neither of them looked like they were worth an extra five bucks. But I got two games for a dollar and they're adding a third one at some point. That's a fair enough price.

A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda is a side-scrolling shooter of some sort. I dunno. Whatever.

 Alien Shooter is a top-down shooter where you shoot aliens. Straightforward enough, I guess. It was originally released in 2003 so it's pretty vintage.

• Alien Shooter
  
• Alien Zombie Megadeath
• A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda
• Astro Tripper
• The Baconing
• Ballistic
  
• Beat Hazard
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Depths of Peril
  
• Explodemon
• FlatOut
• Future Wars
• Gear Grinder
  
• Greed: Black Border
• Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes
• Hack, Slash, Loot
• Inferno+
• Madballs in...Babo: Invasion
• Plain Sight
• Slydris
• Sol Survivor
• Tobe's Vertical Adventure
  
• Trapped Dead
• Twin Sector
• Unstoppable Gorg

Here's a sneak preview of my next update to Project Dredmon:

<skillDB>

<skill name="Dratini" id="147151" type="wizard" description="It's a baby dragon! Someday it'll grow big and strong!" >
    <art icon="skills/dratini64.png" />
</skill>

    <ability name="Dratini" icon="skills/dratini64.png" skill="147151" startSkill="1" >
        <description text="147: Dratini. The Dragon Pokemon. Long ago considered a mythical Pokemon until recently when a small colony was found living underwater." />
    </ability>

<dratiniskills>

    <ability name="Wrap" icon="skills/wrap64.png" skill="147151" level="0" >
        <spell name="Wrap" />
        <resistbuff conflagratory="1" hyperborean="-1" aethereal="-1" voltaic="1" />
        <description text="Dratini can constrict a foe, holding it in place and gradually crushing its life away." />
    </ability>

    <ability name="Twister" icon="skills/twister64.png" skill="147151" level="1" >
        <spell name="Twister" />
        <description text="Create a vortex in front of you, dealing damage to enemies in its path." />
    </ability>

    <ability name="Evolve into Dragonair" icon="skills/dragonair64.png" skill="147151" level="2" >
        <primarybuff id="1" amount="2" /> <!--sage-->
        <secondarybuff id="3" amount="3" /> <!--magic-->
        <secondarybuff id="18" amount="1" /> <!--sight-->
        <description text="148: Dragonair. A mystical Pokemon that exudes a gentle aura. Has the ability to change climate conditions." />
    </ability>

    <ability name="Thunder Wave" icon="skills/thunderwave64.png" skill="147151" level="3" >
        <spell name="Thunder Wave" />
        <description text="Paralyze enemies with a surge of electric energy." />
    </ability>

    <ability name="Dragon Dance" icon="skills/dragondance64.png" skill="147151" level="4" >
        <spell name="Dragon Dance" />
        <description text="A mystical dance that raises your attack and speed." />
    </ability>

    <ability name="Evolve into Dragonite" icon="skills/dragonite64.png" skill="147151" level="5" >
        <primarybuff id="1" amount="2" /> <!--sage-->
        <primarybuff id="2" amount="1" /> <!--nimble-->
        <primarybuff id="5" amount="2" /> <!--savvy-->
        <secondarybuff id="3" amount="2" /> <!--magic-->
        <resistbuff hyperborean="-1" voltaic="-1" slashing="1" asphyxiative="1" />
        <description text="149: Dragonite. An extremely rarely seen marine Pokemon. Its intelligence is said to match that of humans." />
    </ability>

    <ability name="Outrage" icon="skills/outrage64.png" skill="147151" level="6" >
        <spell name="Outrage" />
        <description text="RAGE! RAGE! RAGE! ...Confusion?" />
    </ability>

    <ability name="Draco Meteor" icon="skills/dracometeor64.png" skill="147151" level="7" >
        <spell name="Draco Meteor" />
        <description text="BOOM! Drop a huge meteor out of the sky to cause mass destruction!" />
    </ability>

</dratiniskills>

</skillDB>

That's Dratini, which was requested by a poster on the Gaslamp Games forums. This is the finished XML for the skillDB file (which sets the level-up abilities and skill descriptions). Basically, the skillDB file is a skeleton--it lays out the general framework for what the skill is going to do, defining the basic attributes like the name and class (wizard, rogue, or warrior) and telling the game which abilities you're supposed to get at which level.

This defines when you get the abilities, but it doesn't define the spells themselves. For that, I need to write the spellDB file. The skillDB tells the game "At level 2, Dratini learns Twister." Then the game asks, "Well that's dandy, but WTF is Twister?" That's where the spellDB comes in: it explains to the game what "Twister" actually means. This is what I'm going to work on next.

Wrap should be easy enough, since I already did Fire Spin for Charizard that had the same effect. This one is going to target an adjacent square instead of any visible square, and the damage will be different, but otherwise it's the same code.

For Twister, I'm going to try the "cone" setting, which I've never used before (and none of the official skills use it either). I'll have to experiment. Since it's a simple damage spell, it shouldn't be too hard, although...I guess it has a chance of causing flinching? I'll see if I can add in a chance of stunning for 1 turn. This could take a couple tries. We'll see.

For Thunder Wave, I know there's a template that just hits a 3x3 area, so I'll just use that and give it a stun effect. That one should be simple.

Dragon Dance is going to be a timed buff that stacks up to six times. My biggest concern with this one is that I don't know how long it should last or how much mana it should cost. I've done buffs before, so I know the XML for it and it's pretty much just balance that I'm worried about.

With Outrage, I want it to go boom boom boom on consecutive turns, then confuse you (the confusion would be a debuff that has a 50% chance of dealing damage to you when you attack). I've never done something like that before, but I know that there are several effects in the game already like it (most of Necronomiconomics does it), so I know it can be done. I'll check those out and do some experimentation until I get it to work.

Draco Meteor should be fun. It's going to basically do a Bolt of Mass Destruction (with the numbers and damage types changed around) and I'll add a trigger to it that slaps you with a debuff reducing your magic power. Nothing too out of the box to code, but I'm looking forward to trying it out in-game; nuke effects like these are fun.

I'll also need to find some images. I've been using mostly pictures from the trading cards, since they have some nice art. The nice thing about doing a mod that's a crossover with another work is that you can rip images from the source instead of having to draw them yourself.

Once I've written up the code and found pictures, I'm going to test it in-game to make sure everything works. I built a special mod just for testing that lets me level up for free whenever I want, to save time debugging high-level skills.

This whole process shouldn't take more than a couple hours unless something goes wrong. If something goes wrong, I have to figure out where I messed up and fix it. There's a nice tool online for checking XML syntax, and since I keep making dumb mistakes like forgetting to close the quotation marks or accidentally closing the tag in the wrong place, I've just been running everything through it in advance to save time. It caught like four errors in the XML that I just posted up there.

If everything seems like it's working okay, I'll post the mod up on the forums and pat myself on the back for  a job well done.

After I finish Dratini, I might start on Weedle. We'll see.

Project Dredmon v1.0 is live! You can check it out here.

I chipped away at it all evening and I think I got all of the kinks out. v1.0 contains Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, and Magikarp. If you've never installed a DoD mod before, you'll need to go to My Documents/Gaslamp Games/Dungeons of Dredmor and create a folder called "mods". Then take the .zip file from the link I gave you and download it into that folder (don't unzip it). If you did it right, the Pokemon Skill Pack should appear in the mods list at the game's launcher.

Project Dredmon underway

Goddamn it was an awful commute today. On Fridays, Unitrans runs on the weekend schedule and I can't take the bus both ways, so if I don't bike, I'm missing class. Well, I had an important essay to turn in today, so come Hell or high water I had to be there or risk failing the course. Turns out it was high water. It was pouring all day. I had a raincoat, yeah, but when you're biking for fifty minutes in the pouring rain, you might as well wear a raincoat into a swimming pool because it'll do you about the same amount of good. I was drenched to the bone when I staggered back into my apartment. Then I changed out of my soaked clothes and rummaged through my bag to see which of my possessions had been ruined by the water. The Kindle was okay, but the bike was making some unpleasant squeaky noises towards the end, so fingers crossed. All my papers are damp, but since it's finals week now that's not really important. My wallet got wet on one side, but it didn't have enough time to soak through, so I think it'll be okay.

Anyway, I've been wading through XML files all morning for my new Dungeons of Dredmor/Pokémon crossover mod project. "Project Dredmon", I guess you might call it. After a few stumbles, I'm proud to announce that both the Bulbasaur and Magikarp lines are fully functional!

Magikarp is sort of a joke--I set it up so that the first four levels are complete blanks that only give you joke abilities that do no damage. But if you get past that, you evolve into Gyarados and instantly get a big stat buff, followed by heavy-hitting spells Dragon Rage (40 damage, of course, plus some AoE for crowd control) and Hyper Beam (fires in a straight line across the whole screen, decimating enemies and destroying walls).

Bulbasaur has some interesting magic spells that I haven't playtested, but they seem fun--he's got some snaring and damage with vine whip, draining with leech seed, AoE with Razor Leaf, and it culminates in Venusaur's Solarbeam, which is a lot like Gyarados's Hyper Beam except that it stuns enemies rather than breaking walls. I'm not sure how powerful this set is, but it's certainly possible that the numbers will have to be tweaked either up or down.

And I'm ironing out some bugs with Charmander. The Charmander skill is showing up in all the interfaces, which means I got the basics okay--usually if something is really screwed up, the mod doesn't show up in the game at all, or parts of it are missing. Charmander is showing up fine, which is a good sign. But the abilities aren't working right. Rage is supposed to boost offense when you get damage, but instead it's not having any effect at all, and I haven't figured out why. And I wanted to make Flamethrower attack enemies in a straight line directly in front of you like in Smash Bros. Brawl, but it's doing a weird thing where it attacks some seemingly random set of squares, so I'm going to have to check it against the Thibault's Trompement code to see what I did wrong.

Once I finish with Charmander, Squirtle is next, and we'll see where it goes from there. This is a lot of emulation and trial and error, and I'm sort of excited to see what comes of it. You already got a glimpse of my brainstorming in my last bit. I want to get some mods up and running before I start making more blueprints, though, because it's too easy to sit on the sidelines and make imaginary skillsets than it is to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty in the XML. Creating a working mod is tougher than thinking up a hypothetical one, but it's far more rewarding, both in the satisfying feeling when it works perfectly, and in the real, quantifiable, hands-on experience with basic coding stuff.

This post has a title. It's something to do with Pokémon again.

I've been having this problem with hot pockets where they don't cook properly in the middle. Let me tell you, getting to the center and discovering that it's cold is disgusting.

Anyway, remember when I ranted about the problems with the Pokémon games? I was talking with Ravi about it on Twitter, so I thought some more about it. The solution I came up with: instead of picking one starter out of three, you should be able to pick multiple starters out of a pool of...a lot more than three. Like, you get two or three starters, and they can be, like, any basic Pokémon. So instead of starting with Torchic, I could start with Numel and Spoink. Instead of starting with Totodile, I could start with Elekid and Teddiursa. Instead of starting with Bulbasaur, I could start with Porygon and Seel. See, now that would be cool.

I mean, Dungeons of Dredmor does it. You pick seven skills at the start, out of like 40, and you level them up as you go along. It's just like Pokémon ought to be--a team of seven that works together to...well, I guess this is a dungeon-crawling roguelike game instead of a JRPG, but other than that, it's a lot like Pokémon.

Hey, that's actually a great idea. I should make a Pokémon mod for Dungeons of Dredmor. I could have a skill represent a Pokémon that's in your party.

So there could be a Pikachu skill and you'd start with Thundershock (single-target voltaic damage spell, chance of stunning) and level up to get...what moves does Pikachu learn? Thunder Wave (stun a single target for 2 turns), Quick Attack (teleport a short distance and attack), Thunderbolt (stronger version of Thundershock), Evolve Into Raichu (passive stat boosts), Thunder (even stronger voltaic attack with AoE damage), Surf (short-range AoE attack). And you could start with a "Light Orb" item that gives a voltaic damage buff.

Ooh, this is a gold mine. Let's think of some more. How about Caterpie?

String Shot: Knockback effect.
Evolve into Metapod: Passive buff to defense.
Harden: Brittle buff that boosts block chance and magic resistance.
Evolve into Butterfree: Passive buffs to some stats.
Sleep Powder: Puts enemies to sleep in a 3x3 square.
Stun Spore: Stuns enemies in a 3x3 square.

Abra!

Teleport: Carbon copy of Froda's Jump Discontinuity.
Evolve into Kadabra: Passive stat buffs.
Kinesis: Carbon copy of Psychokinetic Shove, except nerfed because that spell's overpowered.
Confusion: Targeted damage spell that has a chance of confusing.
Evolve into Alakazam: Passive stat buffs.
Psychic: Targeted damage spell that also debuffs.

Magikarp!

Splash: Does nothing.
Keep splashing!: Also does nothing.
Tackle: Does a normal attack.
Flail: Does a small amount of damage to enemies standing near you.
Evolve into Gyarados: MASSIVE STAT BUFFS
DRAGON RAGE: MASSIVE FIREBALL
HYPER BEAM: MASSIVE DAMAGE

Ditto!

Transform: Gives you a random effect depending on what Pokémon you transformed into.
(And that's his only ability.)

I might actually do these. I should probably include starter Pokémon if I do, though.

Bulbasaur:

Vine Whip: Carbon copy of Skatha's Roots.
Leech Seed: Damage over time spell that deals damage and heals you.
Evolve into Ivysaur: Stat buffs.
Razor Leaf: Projectile attack that deals slashing damage.
Evolve into Venusaur: Stat buffs.
Solarbeam: Projectile attack that fires in a straight line and pierces opponents.

Charmander:

Ember: Carbon copy of the fire wand attack.
Evolve into Charmeleon: Stat buffs.
Rage: Timed buff that boosts your power, crit, and counter.
Evolve into Charizard: Stat buffs.
Flamethrower: Projectile attack that deals conflagratory damage to a single target.
Fire Spin: Snares and deals conflagratory damage over time.

Squirtle:

Bubble: Deals a small amount of damage and has a chance of causing knockback. I don't know what kind of damage you get with water. Asphyxiative, I guess.
Water Gun: Single target damage spell.
Evolve into Wartortle: Stat buffs.
Skull Bash: Single target close-range knockback attack. Gives a short temporary defensive buff.
Evolve into Blastoise: Stat buffs.
Hydro Pump: Projectile attack that causes knockback and deals heavy damage.

And of course there would be bonuses to resistances, positive and negative, based on the Pokémon's types.

Yeah, this might be my new modding project, since the Phyrexiamancy thing never quite worked out. Hell, here's a couple more.

Weedle:

Poison Sting: Chance of a damage over time effect on melee and ranged attacks.
Evolve into Kakuna: Stat buffs.
Harden: Same as Metapod.
Evolve into Beedrill: Stat buffs.
Rage: Same as Charmeleon.
Twineedle: Attacks twice. Also, passive buff to piercing damage and crit chance.

Pidgey:

Sand Attack: Single target debuff.Gust: Single target damage spell. Chance of knockback.
Evolve into Pidgeotto: Stat buffs.
Wing Attack: Short-range AoE attack.
Evolve into Pidgeot: Stat buffs.
Whirlwind: Copy of Psychokinetic Shove, but more damage, and with a cooldown.

Diglett:

Dig: Digs one square into a wall.
Evolve into Dugtrio: Stat buffs.
Tri Attack: Does a mix of conflagratory, hyperborean, and voltaic damage. 
Earthquake: AoE damage.
Fissure: Lots of targeted blasting damage.


...I'd better stop here or I'll be up all night.

It's time for more Dungeons of Dredmor talk. This time: Mathemagic.

Mathemagic is a support skill for mages, with teleports, debuffs, and a magic buff. It has a lot of great utility and, if used properly, can be a lot of fun to play around with.

It starts you with a Coat of Tweed, which is stronger than the standard wizard's robe. It buffs your max mana. Not exciting, but starting equipment rarely is, and it's a nifty perk.

The base spell is Froda's Jump Discontinuity, which is a random teleport. It warps you to a random nearby tile. Not gonna lie, this spell is tough to use effectively. You can't really use it against groups of enemies because you're likely to end up right in the middle of a gang of baddies who will proceed to surround and pummel you. If it's just one enemy, your odds are a lot better, and you can probably buy a turn or two this way. Or, if you managed to get surrounded on your own, it can be an "Anywhere but here!" button. It's pretty narrow, but it's not useless.

Then you get the Diminishing Calculus, which is a stackable debuff that also deals damage. Beklam's Diminishing Calculus does a number on monsters' offensive stats with some relevant debuffing to burliness and melee power. Use it on an approaching enemy to ping them for damage while nerfing their power. Combined with tactical use of the Jump Discontinuity, you can teleport-spam around a single enemy while applying multiple debuffs to them. Again, though, as a single-target spell, this is less effective against groups. It's a good support spell that doesn't cost too much mana, but you'll want to make sure you have some heavier firepower to back it up. And if you're not a wizard, you might as well just use a crossbow if you're going to plink an enemy at range.

Curse of the Golden Ratio is a single-target damage-over-time spell.It deals decent damage, but it's severely limited by its mana cost, which is really steep. True, it has the additional upside of dropping money, but as nice as that is, you probably won't be casting this spell regularly. Even if you're dabbling in blood magic for mana restoration, the single-target damage-over-time spell is not exactly synergistic. The damage on this one is actually pretty good, but it pales in comparison to the other offensive spells you could be casting from other disciplines, like Obvious Fireball or My Chemical Explosion.

Next up is Zenzizenzizenzic, which is a timed buff that boosts your magic power, sagacity, and mana regen, and can be stacked up to three times. The mana regen is not super useful, since the buff has an upkeep cost. But the big draw here is that there's no minimum mana cost, and the cost scales downward very rapidly. If you can start casting this for free, you'll be getting some nice extra damage on your spells. Again, this is not exciting on its own, but as support for a wizard build with other spellbooks, this is a great effect to have. Early on, it might be expensive, but it's better in the later floors, when you've leveled up enough to accumulate a high savvy score to bring its mana cost down low.

And then you have Xeuclid's Translation. Now this is a spell. Teleportation is a powerful ability, and unlike the cheap imitation teleports you get from other skills, this one is only limited by your mana. That means you don't need to save it for emergencies--you can cheapo them out anytime. Toss a bomb, teleport away, toss a bomb, teleport away, toss a bomb, teleport away...you're in business, my friend. Having the ability to say "Whoops, this is getting tight, I think I'll back off" at any time is an awesome defensive...defense-thing. Once again, this is only really going to be effective for mages, because of the mana cost. But if you make that commitment, this spell will save your life. I would say this is probably the main draw of the Mathemagic skill.

Lastly, The Recursive Curse. This is a sweet one. It's Diminishing Calculus's big brother. It has the same base debuff + damage effect as its initial hit...but it also slaps the target with a damage-over-time effect that adds up to serious damage, and the debuffs it applies get worse and worse over time. And also much like Diminishing Calculus, it suffers from being a single-target spell. Don't rely on Recursive Curse to power you through difficult rooms, but do abuse it against bosses and other tough enemies.

Overall, Mathemagic is a weak skill when considered in a vacuum, but in the context of a wizard character with other spell trees, the awesome teleport and the crippling single-target debuffs are a nutritious part of this complete breakfast, so to speak. A spellbook like Promethean Magic is great at dealing massive Area of Effect damage, but not so efficient when dealing with lone enemies. Mathemagic shores up the weaknesses of other wizard skills with a couple of solid, cheap single-target attacks and a handy-dandy teleport for tactical...positioning...stuff. On the other hand, it's close to useless if you're a warrior or rogue without the mana supply to power it; Recursive Curse is great at 6 mana, not so great at 30 mana.

So this isn't the most powerful skill tree in town, but it has interesting tactical implications that can lead to a unique and fun gameplay experience for magic-based characters. If you've never tried it before, I definitely recommend giving it a swing one of these days.

More Dungeons of Dredmor. Let's talk about Perception.


The biggest problem with Perception is that it doesn't work. Buffs to your vision range don't actually increase your vision range. This is probably a bug, and hopefully it'll get fixed at some point, but it's obviously pretty unfortunate.

Having noted that, Perception is underpowered. Even if the sight radius buffs had any effect...well, sight radius doesn't do much. I mean, it extends the range of your magic and thrown weapons slightly, I guess, but that's a corner case. Mostly all it does is make you better against darkness curses, and if you're worried about that, you might as well just take Emomancy for curse removal and get some good spells.

Sight radius being underpowered kind of ruins the appeal of this skill, since that's basically the only thing it's good for. It gives you a little bit of anti-trap, but if you need an anti-trap skill, Perception is basically just flat-out worse than Burglary, Archaeology, or Tinkering, which are just as good or better at anti-trappery but have a variety of utility thingies to go with them. Whereas Perception has...not much of anything, really.

It gives you some small boosts to dodge and enemy dodge reduction, but neither of those are especially useful or exciting. It gives some small boosts against traps, but as I said, Burglary and Archaeology and Tinkering are much better for that. And you get Eye Lasers, but it's a single-target spell with a long cooldown and it's really not that good. If you took Tinkering instead, you'd have infinite crossbow bolts and you'd never even need a single-target damage spell, and you'd get more trap affinity and extra Savvy to make your spells cheaper.

You get a Second Sight buff, but it's really annoying to keep reactivating it, and the bonuses it gives aren't particularly great. The accuracy is substantial, but accuracy in general is not very important. And then there's Third Sight, which I swear does stone nothing. It's supposed to reveal traps and invisible enemies but a. you already have +5 trap detection just from the previous levels, how much do you need? And b. you have to manually activate it, so it's pointless unless you already know there's a trap in which case don't walk on it, durr.

So where does that leave Perception? It's just a worse version of some other rogue skills, basically. I don't think it's very good. If you're interested in the skill, I recommend installing Essence's Core Skill Rebalance mod, which gives it some much-needed buffs to make it viable, raising its stat boosts and adding a loot drop passive bonus.

I'm going to talk Dungeons of Dredmor because I like Dungeons of Dredmor. Today's topic: Astrology.

The Astrology skill is a defensive school of magic. It offers some nice passive buffs and defensive spells that make it nicely-suited for wizards, warriors, and rogues alike. It starts you with an Astrologer's Hat, which gives a little mana buff--not awesome, but hey, it's free.

The first skill is Radiant Aura, a buff. This is a great starter skill; it gives you some boosts to offense, defense, and vision, and it gives you a chance of triggering a blinding flash that stuns and damages all the enemies around you every time you get hit. The nice thing about Radiant Aura is that you can activate it and forget about it--it doesn't have any upkeep costs and there's no timer. It just lasts until you take 5 hits. Rogues and wizards should appreciate the boost to their vision, which will let them attack from further away, and warriors will love the random blinding flashes. Since it's so cheap and only needs to be occasionally reactivated, it's perfect if you've got a build with no other magic skill trees--you don't need a lot of mana to make full use of this spell. All in all, very handy.

Next is Solar Inscription, which drops a rune on the ground that blasts any enemy who walks over it. This one is actually bugged, I think, because the description implies that it's supposed to cause paralysis, but it actually doesn't. The fix is easy--I just jumped into the spellDB.xml file and saw that the paralysis was there, but commented out. Remove the <!--comment--> tags and it'll work. Assuming you get the paralysis back, this spell becomes a lot more useful, especially for rogues. Drop it in front of an approaching enemy to stop it in its tracks for a couple turns. Use that time to set up a trap or two, or toss some ranged attacks. It's mana-intensive, so you can't use it too often, and it's not very effective against groups of enemies, but its got some solid utility.

Then there's Blinding Flash. This one is a little awkward because it only hits enemies that are next to you. If you're a melee build, you want to get up close and personal, but you also won't have the magic power necessary for this to deal decent damage. If you're a mage, the spell might have some teeth, but you also really don't want to get too close to an enemy because you'll be squishy. Basically, it's only good when you're surrounded, and even then it's risky because it doesn't always give you the stun effect. The other time is when an enemy is approaching you diagonally, and you get to use this as a pseudo-ranged hit. I hardly ever activate this spell manually--it triggers automatically sometimes off Radiant Aura, and that's usually fine.

Syzygy is next, and it's the weakest spell in the spellbook because it doesn't do anything. The actual buff is great--it gives a substantial boost to HP, plus some other boosts that are great too--but Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters are common and cheap in vending machines, and they're easy to pick up off the ground in later floors. They duplicate this spell exactly. This wouldn't be a big deal except that Syzygy is an untimed buff, so if you find one Gargle Blaster you can keep it running indefinitely. Having the actual spell is handy if you need to cut it short and want to reactivate it, which, in fairness, could happen in some wizard builds. But it's not usually a concern if you have Blood Magic, and if you're running out of mana, it's because you're in combat, and if you're in combat, you want this active, right? So this is not a super-useful slot.

Celestial Aegis is the penultimate spell, and it's not bad, I guess. It gives some defensive boosts, costs 1 mana every 5 turns, and disappears if you take 5 hits. It's actually weaker than Radiant Aura, I think. The defensive boosts aren't bad, and it's not too painful to turn on and off if you have decent Savvy (the min cost is 5). So it's okay, but not very exciting.

The capstone is The Stars Aligned. This is the big one. I love this spell. It's like Blinding Aura, but with a HUGE radius, a sizable chunk of hard-to-resist damage that scales quickly with magic power, and it paralyzes! It starts out costing a lot, but with enough Savvy it's possible to get it as low as 5 mana! Woah! Spam that shit. If you're a wizard, or a wizard/rogue hybrid, this is great for managing crowds of enemies at medium range. If you're a warrior, you probably won't have enough mana to cast it, which is sad. But it's a sweet spell.


I like Astrology for wizards as utility; if you're a blood mage, you can easily afford to keep the buffs running, and you can get great use out of The Stars Aligned once you hit the top level. For warriors, it's a nice skill to take just for the first level; if you're not doing anything else with your mana, you may as well enjoy Radiant Aura, which is cheap, powerful, and requires no skill points. It's pretty sweet to randomly proc Blinding Flashes in close combat. For rogues, you can make good use of Solar Inscription (assuming you fix the paralysis thing), and if you have enough skill points later on, aligning the stars isn't out of the question either.