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Reduce inventory management for throwing weapons

PostPosted: Tuesday, 22nd November 2016, 07:00
by Quazifuji
Removing branded bolts, sling bullets, and arrows made inventory management a lot less annoying for characters who use launchers, but throwing weapons still create a ridiculous amount of annoying inventory management. You have stones, tomahawks, javelins, various branded tomahawks and javelins, and on top of that you've got a whole second set of throwing weapons, needles, that come in a wide variety of brands and require their own special launcher. The number of inventory slots that throwing ammo can take up is ridiculous.

I propose two changes to help with this issue: Remove most or all javelin and tomahawk brands, and remove blowguns and rename needles to darts (same effect but no launcher). These changes aren't connected (one could easily be done without the other), but both would help make using throwing less annoying.

1. Remove most or all javelin and tomahawk brands

Steel is boring. Poison and silver are both boring and badly designed (silver revolves around otherwise-rarely-used monster tags like chaotic, and poison encourages tedious kiting). Poison is also redundant with poison needles. These three should be removed without a doubt.

Exploding Tomahawks are just terrible. Nearly insignificant damage, auto-mulching, and they make loud noise. They could be buffed or removed, I think it's probably better to just remove them. You could make the argument that it's redundant with Wand of Iceblast.

Returning weapons can be useful at times, but I don't think they're interesting enough to be worth the inventory management they create. If removing this would hurt supply of javelins and tomahawks in early game too much, you could always make normal ones generate in slightly larger stacks on average.

Dispersal tomahawks can be interesting, but also feel kind of out of place in a weapon category that otherwise does purely damage. I feel like it might make sense to either remove these or reflavor them as a needle.

Penetrating javelins are powerful and serve a clear purpose. You could make a case for keeping or removing them, really.

So that's at least three brands that should absolutely be removed, one that should be buffed or removed, and three that are debatable, in my opinion.

2. Remove blowguns, change needles to darts:

There are three problems with blowguns:

  1. It's unintuitive that blowguns use throwing skill, and something new players might not realize.
  2. Switching to a launcher is annoying, half the reason I use throwing instead of a launcher-based ranged weapon sometimes is just to avoid needing a launcher.
  3. They take up yet another inventory slot in an item category that already takes up too many inventory slots.

Granted, this is a pretty big buff to throwing weapons. A lot of needles are ones that can be very useful in a pinch, and you rarely want to use more than a few needles at a time (you're generally either trying to just poison an enemy enough to kite it to death, or cause a status effect and then run away or attack with something else), so removing the extra aut it takes to switch from hitting an enemy in melee to trying to curare or confuse them or whatever isn't insignificant. Maybe this is too big a buff (although the first proposal would be a net nerf), but if it's not it would make blowguns a lot less annoying and throwing more cohesive as a skill.

Re: Reduce inventory management for throwing weapons

PostPosted: Tuesday, 22nd November 2016, 08:13
by Sprucery
I pretty much agree otherwise, but imo silver should stay, because taking down OoFs with silver javelins/tomahawks is fun.

Re: Reduce inventory management for throwing weapons

PostPosted: Tuesday, 22nd November 2016, 08:59
by Quazifuji
Sprucery wrote:I pretty much agree otherwise, but imo silver should stay, because taking down OoFs with silver javelins/tomahawks is fun.


I've had fun killing OoFs with silver sling bullets before, but doesn't mean having throwing weapons that are just normal ones that do extra damage to OoFs in the game is actually a good idea.

Re: Reduce inventory management for throwing weapons

PostPosted: Wednesday, 7th December 2016, 20:44
by Lasty
I've already got a patch for this on the incomplete ranged reform branch. I also cut needles down to three types: poison, curare, and frenzy. I wanted to remove the overlap with hexes to a large degree.

Re: Reduce inventory management for throwing weapons

PostPosted: Wednesday, 7th December 2016, 21:02
by VeryAngryFelid
Maybe it is better to remove needles which overlap with level 5-9 Hexes (Metabolic Englaciation and Discord, mass target though) instead of level 2 Hex (Ensorcelled Hibernation). Is removing curare not an option (much stronger than Slow)? It's too cheap way to deal with dangerous monsters IMHO.

Re: Reduce inventory management for throwing weapons

PostPosted: Saturday, 10th December 2016, 17:45
by Speleothing
Afaik, the Returning effect occurs based on throwing skill, so it doesn't really apply to early-game ammo concerns.

I've never really sucessfully used dispersal 'hawks, but mostly because I forget I have them. Feel like a keeper to me, maybe they ought to be more common? Orc packs messing with your positioning by forced blinking would make them more relevant in late-D & V.

Exploding is a good concept, but needs to be pretty heavily buffed to be worthwhile. Probably make explosion damage based on throwing skill so they're not a no-brainer?

Penetration is vital for melee dudes who are trying to deal with smiters, summoners, and vault wardens. A definite keeper.

Re: Reduce inventory management for throwing weapons

PostPosted: Saturday, 10th December 2016, 19:07
by Shtopit
Doesn't penetration overlap with bolt wands, and explosion with blast wands?

One could eliminate the brands and turn them into spellsongs, with a mana cost for activation each time you throw. Song of silver and song of penetration, something like that.

Re: Reduce inventory management for throwing weapons

PostPosted: Sunday, 11th December 2016, 06:02
by duvessa
Shtopit wrote:song of penetration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ljLPZEfjs