skelleton dragon is fine on its own.

the concept card for wall of bones is obtainable with an event that gives starter cards. needless to say it is completely overpowered. if you are going to add it to the intended cards I would reccomend making it 3 cost or more as well as exuasting.

Lotta fun with this guy, but my plays with him usually boil down to Steal Strength and Multi-hitting everything to death.

Oh and picking up any way to get my Strength buffing cards back from the gexhaust pile to do it again. Wish there was more bone synergy, maybe something that ate bone charges to give you plated armor.

Blood Magic is kinda crazy good, and Vampire Princess is a grab every time you see it card.

Originally posted by Definitely A Human:

the concept card for wall of bones is obtainable with an event that gives starter cards. needless to say it is completely overpowered. if you are going to add it to the intended cards I would reccomend making it 3 cost or more as well as exuasting.

Yikes, that thing is in no way supposed to be obtainable. Damn events, I'll need to get rid of the line that makes it appear it seems. It was merely a proof-of-concept type deal a year ago. And yes it is completely busted.

I was going to comment about the balance of this mod but would say that this character is really underpowered.

Don't get me wrong, he is a strong character with some good abilities but the problem is that the upgraded abilities are nowhere as good as the main cast upgraded abilities.

Many upgrades either don't apply extra debuff or don't give extra hits to be worth an upgrade.

There are a few exceptions, expecially the zombie cards, but most cards that apply poison or negative levels can't even stack as you can't apply it for long enough to be a thing.

I hope this comment helps anything, this character has become one of my favorites, and really liked many concepts, but what keeps me going on is not how strong the necromancer is but is how many times can I get "Spectral" status to work so my minions can do some decent damage.

Am I playing the Necromancer wrong or does this class just struggle in Act 4? I'm aware that this mod is relatively old and was therefore not designed with Act 4 in mind, but it does bring some issues to light, I think.

Namely, the Necromancer suffers from very limited draw options and a weak blocking package. Now, that's not to say that the Necromancer has a weak mitigative package, overall, but Negative Levels are rather slow for the Heart, not to mention it cleanses Strength debuffs (but not Negative Levels) and gains Artifact.

I know the card list isn't complete, so there's plenty of design space to address these issues. I think that Bones, in particular, could be a good space to introduce greater block density, if not scaling.

Originally posted by TCSyd:

Am I playing the Necromancer wrong or does this class just struggle in Act 4? I'm aware that this mod is relatively old and was therefore not designed with Act 4 in mind, but it does bring some issues to light, I think.

Namely, the Necromancer suffers from very limited draw options and a weak blocking package. Now, that's not to say that the Necromancer has a weak mitigative package, overall, but Negative Levels are rather slow for the Heart, not to mention it cleanses debuffs and gains Artifact.

I know the card list isn't complete, so there's plenty of design space to address these issues. I think that Bones, in particular, could be a good space to introduce greater block density, if not scaling.

Tiny spoiler, there are currently 2 Bone cards being tested; one will turn bones into plated armor, and one will deal damage X times for each stack of bone you have to all enemies + cause a negative level every3 or so hits. Also Shade-Step will be fixed and buffed, and in general I'll take some look at my draw cards and the powerlevel of rares.

Sounds good; I look forward to it.

I, like everyone else here, seems to enjoy this mod a lot. He is my favorite followed by the defect. In my opinion the steal strength card on upgrade should not exhaust but still cost one to balance it. And I agree many of the negative level cards need to add extra levels on upgrade even at the expense of damage. I would like to know what the upgraded bone dragon does since it doesn't seem to have any effect on the upgrade.

Originally posted by Mephiston:

I, like everyone else here, seems to enjoy this mod a lot. He is my favorite followed by the defect. In my opinion the steal strength card on upgrade should not exhaust but still cost one to balance it. And I agree many of the negative level cards need to add extra levels on upgrade even at the expense of damage. I would like to know what the upgraded bone dragon does since it doesn't seem to have any effect on the upgrade.

Until I manage to word it in a way that does not make the cardtext spill out of the card, the upgrade is marked in the keyword : "Skeleton Dragon deals 5 (7) damage to all enemies...". I'm currently working on rewording a lot of the weird descriptions.

Originally posted by Shiki:

Until I manage to word it in a way that does not make the cardtext spill out of the card, the upgrade is marked in the keyword : "Skeleton Dragon deals 5 (7) damage to all enemies...". I'm currently working on rewording a lot of the weird descriptions.

Thats amazing, thank you. Is there an ETA with a patch for this, I don't want to seem like Im rushing you I am just wondering when I can enjoy more tasty tasty undead action :).

Originally posted by Mephiston:

Originally posted by Shiki:

Until I manage to word it in a way that does not make the cardtext spill out of the card, the upgrade is marked in the keyword : "Skeleton Dragon deals 5 (7) damage to all enemies...". I'm currently working on rewording a lot of the weird descriptions.

Thats amazing, thank you. Is there an ETA with a patch for this, I don't want to seem like Im rushing you I am just wondering when I can enjoy more tasty tasty undead action :).

Patch is out. Hopefully it is more clear now! Be advised that you now also need StSLib , as I've exchanged my own Stun-logic for the StSLib version as that one is more stable.

Is Spectral supposed to halve blocked damage now? The card tooltip indicates as such, but the tooltip for Spectral on the character still indicates only unblocked damage.

If it is intended to halve blocked damage now, then I'm not too sure how I feel about it; it feels perhaps too strong. If the card list was larger or if Spectral Armor was a rare card, then you would at least be less likely to draft enough cards to consistently maintain Spectral. You could also give the Spectral cards charges or have them exhaust, but that might make them too weak, as they are.

Buff to Shade Step is good, but Bone Shift still feels pretty bad with the current state of Bones.

Speaking of Bones, the new keyword, "Shatter," is a little peculiar to me. That is, it made me think that Shatter may have been its own effect in addition to whatever effect the card produced. That could be a way to make Bones more relevant, though I'm aware you're already working on more cards to enable Bones.

Bone Spikes is missing Shatter keyword.

Summon Skeleton Dragon's card text is messed up; it says it deals -1 damage.

Originally posted by TCSyd:

Is Spectral supposed to halve blocked damage now? The card tooltip indicates as such, but the tooltip for Spectral on the character still indicates only unblocked damage.

If it is intended to halve blocked damage now, then I'm not too sure how I feel about it; it feels perhaps too strong. If the card list was larger or if Spectral Armor was a rare card, then you would at least be less likely to draft enough cards to consistently maintain Spectral. You could also give the Spectral cards charges or have them exhaust, but that might make them too weak, as they are.

Buff to Shade Step is good, but Bone Shift still feels pretty bad with the current state of Bones.

Speaking of Bones, the new keyword, "Shatter," is a little peculiar to me. That is, it made me think that Shatter may have been its own effect in addition to whatever effect the card produced. That could be a way to make Bones more relevant, though I'm aware you're already working on more cards to enable Bones.

Bone Spikes is missing Shatter keyword.

Summon Skeleton Dragon's card text is messed up; it says it deals -1 damage.

Still looking into ways to buff Bone Shift.

Going to fix the Bone Spikes description.

Checking why Skeleton Dragon shows the wrong amount of damage.

Yes, Spectral now also halves Blocked damage. It was either keep the confusion with the enemy intent not reflecting the change and enemies that heal for the damage they deal heal for the wrong amount, or halve all damage. I decided to halve all damage, but I'll keep an eye on it. If it seems to be too strong, I'll see if there is some hackjob I can do to return it to how it used to work while still fixing those remote cases.

The Shatter keyword is supposed to make the descriptions more readable and understandable, however I'm currently thinking of including a Power that does something everytime you "Shatter" some bones.

Thanks for all the help!

Dang, y'all are talking about BUFFING this character? I was about to say I like the concept, but it feels overpowered. Took down the Heart with nearly full HP on my first run.

Then again, the Intangible event makes nearly anything overpowered... so here's my two cents; take them with a grain of salt.

There's a lot of great ideas at work here. I think anything that applies negative levels should be buffed to have more negative levels even if it means losing damage, because unless you're using the negative energy shield against a multi-hit attack, they don't really do much.

Summons are a bit strong. There probably ought to be a summon cap, or summons ought to decay after a time period. Having a couple Zombie Army cards gives you a free 24 damage per turn.

I know it's a rare card, but the one that applies 8 poison to all enemies is very strong. It probably ought to exhaust, at a minimum.

There's a card that doubles all debuffs on an enemy, and it costs 1 energy to play. That's actually pretty insane, considering it lets you basically perma-lock bosses and elites into weak, frail and vulnerable with high poison (and if you're lucky, negative levels). If it were to double a single random debuff, that'd be more in line with what I'd expect from a 1-cost card.

I can't decide what I think of Vampire Lady/Princess. It gives you some breathing room to play with the Necromancer's HP-cost cards without feeling like you're gimping yourself, but at the same time it makes it very easy to tank enemy damage or heal up after a tough fight. Nerfing the card's HP drain would only be infuriating since it just takes longer to do anything, but it also costs as much energy as is feasible. Maybe it could give you Blood instead of HP, but then it'd be useless unless you're making a build based off of HP-cost cards.

The gamebreaker, though, is Grip Heart. 3 damage per turn, increasing by 3 per turn makes boss battles trivial, especially with a Zombie Army or two. You only need a couple turns setup and you can spend the rest of the battle blocking since you'll easily deal between 30 and 60+ damage at turn's end anyway, plus healing and whatever poison damage you stack. This is why the fight against the Heart and its guardians wasn't even a semi-challenge.

To be fair, I also find poison-focused Silent builds overpowered for most of the same reasons I list above, and some people find the Silent really hard to play. In the end though, despite what I consider to be balancing issues, I do like the mod. Great ideas and good execution overall.