Siegurt wrote:We don't want something at that level that's strictly worse than blade hands (the current situation) because well, then it's not useful. And we don't want something strictly *better* than blade hands, because blade hands is already damn good enough, and also then blade hands would be useless.
I agree we don't want something worse than/better than blade hands, but I would argue that calling this "the current situtation" is wrong. More below.
Siegurt wrote:Healing/Recovery (I think this is what Hydra form is intended or, but it's implemented in an awkward way that makes it undesirable and dangerous, being able to drop out instantly was something I thought might make it less dangerous to use.)
This, in addition to adding cleaving, is hydra form's intended niche. Don't underestimate cleaving. But let's go one aspect at a time:
Vampiric effect: Hydra form can eat monsters, healing for an extremely high amount. It seemed to be around 20-30 hp per 'eat', although with cleaving I've seen ridiculous things like healing for 90 hp after an attack. Do not underestimate how effective this is when fighting pack monsters. That being said, it's also dangerous to rely on it, because it's always possible that you miss the monster and it hits you before you eat it.
Cleaving effect: imho, one of the core weaknesses of most melee characters is the lack of aoe. You can't deal with swarms as effectively as most mages, Ziggs become much more challenging, summoners painful (at least if they aren't directly next to you). Axe users don't have these problems, but give up roughly 20% of their damage for the perk. Now, unarmed users (the master race) get to have their cake and eat it too.
Nutrition: Not the most important effect, but it's a nice perk that makes eating less tedious. Look at my ogre transmuter's "eat" action table:
- Code:
Eat: Chunk | 2 | 7 | 7 | 15 | 20 | 26 | 3 | 3 | 42 || 125
Meat ration | | | 1 | | | | | | 2 || 3
Bread ration | | | | 1 | | 1 | | | 5 || 7
Pizza | | | | | | 4 | 1 | | 7 || 12
Royal jelly | | | | | | | | | 16 || 16
Beef jerky | | | | | | | | | 12 || 12
The two sections on the top line with 3 eatten chunks? Levels 19 through 24, inclusive, I ate 6 chunks (and one pizza for twelwe). This isn't really powerful, but it does feel fun. You can see in the later game I eventually shifted to statue form because AC is really important, and had to eat again.
On the topic of instant shifting: This is something that I consider deeply interesting about Hydra form's duration. Because it's so short, against normal speed monsters without much in the way of ranged attacks, you can instantly end the form already - take a step or two back. Obviously this doesn't apply as much if you're worshipping Chei, but only fools do that. This is why I pushed for less variance on hydra form's duration (
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14330) and that's already coded, so you should always have a general idea, plus or minus about 2 turns, when you'll shift back. There are certainly times you want to get your armor back asap, and hydra form rewards those who pay attention. I did have one fairly obvious blunder of overconfidence when I tried to hydra form against two hydras and a swamp dragon near the swamp rune. Did not go well, but a blink away will get you out of those sorts of bad positions.
This may not be the best focused post anymore, but hopefully I've succeeded in explaining why I don't consider hydra form to be very much like blade hands at all. Did I mention hydra form removes almost all of your AC? Blade hands only removes gloves, which is quite different. Anyways. Let's call that settled.
There's still things that could be improved - it's not exactly transparent to me what hydra form is allowed to eat. It seems to be that the monster has to leave a corpse, but that isn't the only condition. It probably ignores rot/mutation corpses, and it seems to not eat dragons, not sure why. Possibly wanting to allow players to get hides? Or dragons are just to big and dragon-like to be eaten by a lesser dragon? Does the healing follow the same rules? I believe you can heal from an attack that doesn't kill the monster outright, so they aren't yet eaten. I should probably take better notes on new spells. But I suppose it shows that while these rules might be non-intuitive, it doesn't really prevent you from using the spell successfully.
Friday, 10th October 2014, 12:36 
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