Same pic! Too bad for you!!
As of yesterday, the underworld is
done! As of today, every skill is finally fully implemented with all effects (except one which has the wrong graphics... maybe I can get that done before today is through), and is horribly imbalanced. Actually, I spent most of the day doing balance tweaks to them, but I don't have enough information to really do it right, and it was only on some of them, so others may be worthless or overpowered.
Speaking of overpowered abilities, part of the immense fun in making your own RPG is setting up rule systems. As I was outside watering the trees (not a euphemism!), it occurred to me that I enjoy skills with synergies, as in the more recent Diablo II patches. It's fun to know that once you have maxed out a skill (which isn't very tough in this game, hence the need for excitement), there's still something you can do to squeak out a little bit more power. I also wanted something to encourage you to focus on specific magic schools instead of picking and choosing your favorite spells from all over. So, I threw in something which I am just now verifying for correctness. It's simple: every point you put into a spell of a given school (Nature, Fire, Ice, Wind, or Death, each with 4 spells) adds 1% to the damage/healing of all spells of that school. Simple and fun! And it should greatly reward you for focusing - that's a possible 40% boost in damage. The best (non-artifact) equipment in the game only gives +50%, so it's almost like wearing two amulets. I have to go add a hint message to explain that to the players now...
So hopefully that doesn't destroy the balance. There's been very little testing of how balanced spells are, and they're changing rapidly, so it's not like they're easy to test either. In fact, another thing I did today was to make the skill that boosts your maximum magic also majorly boost your magic regeneration speed, to the point that it's doubled if you max out that skill. That's a huge change, but I think it's a good one. Before, waiting for your magic to recover took forever, making magic a really poor way to do damage compared to just tossing some axes.
Okay, I'm off to make those tweaks, then tomorrow I can get started on the next, not to be spoken of, area of the game! There are currently only three quests that can't be finished, I think.
PS - the other thing I finished today was the artifacts! There are now 24 total, making for no less than 79 different possible magical bonuses an item can have. That, combined with the skills an item can boost and the stats an item can have makes for hundreds of millions of possible items. Granted, the difference between a 9 damage Axe and a 10 damage Axe isn't that exciting, but there's a lot of stuff that is! Okay, back to the spell checks.
