Divinations spell school will not be back, but a god with similar powers will come.

–Eino

As far as I remember, every school had a class dedicated to it, EXCEPT Divinations. This alone should be a hint about the wrongness of the school.

But I hope in the future the school can be back to business. It was flawed, but not really fundamentally.

Like dpeg said, we are skipping the nerf cycle that would ultimately lead to removal anyway. I do think it would be better in a consumable form, where you really have to weigh when you want to use it. But, now that it’s totally gone, I’m surprised I don’t miss it.

–Eino

@evktalo:
What is FR?

GD:
Interesting. I see the Divination spells as power-gaming spells myself.. I’m under the impression you could amass (infinite) loot from Pan, then take your armour off in a safe place and safely go through the loot with (infinite) Detect/Remove Curse and Identify.

The ideas about making the spells cost resources are neat, but also it seems better to just cut the spells and make the effects resources (i.e. scrolls, a god) in themselves.

Detect Creatures as a spell – for me, it felt obligatory when playing a caster (it’s so cheap to obtain too), but now I don’t find myself missing it. It’ll be interesting if those fragile Deep Elf casters will want the divination god to avoid tricky encounters (once the god is there of course..)

–Eino

Sure, the mana cost wasn’t the balancing factor, but their moderate power level (obviating the need for a skill, for some characters, and some items in the late game… that no one wanted to have to chase around in the late game anyway) were balanced by the low-to-moderate opportunity cost to learn them in the first place. And they could have been balanced by other resources if necessary… something original rather than taking away elements: gold consumption, intelligence decay, use of “white crystals” scattered through the dungeon, or whatever.

Yeah… disappointing decision.

Magic Mapping is a very useful scroll, and it may be a good idea to provide them with a somewhat higher probability. Another idea: there could be a rare potion that gives you the passive mapping ability for some time.

I wouldn’t mind if there were items (a scroll, for example), that helps with detecting creatures. In fact, monster detection could come in a number of ways… It is clear that a spell won’t do. (Note that DCSS 0.1 was aware of the brokenness of the spell; it was nerfed by making monster casters aware the player. This is thematic, but a fairly hidden mechanic, and does not solve the problem properly.)

Finally, on the Divinations god: I hope we agree that the god would be hopelessly overpowered if (at full piety, say), he gave away full maps and the presence of all monsters. Therefore, it will be possible to come up with an implementation that’s attractive and not too weak.

Magic Mapping was the only way to find inaccessible areas in the Orcish Mines/Slime Pits without randomly digging or teleporting everywhere, and it also combined very well with Passwall (a very unique and underutilized spell). It could possibly return as a level 4 pure Earth spell (we don’t have any of those at the moment), similarly to how See Invisible is now Enchantment only. Note that it does not obsolete the Magic Mapping scroll, because the spell version has a significantly lower power limit, and as such, it can’t be used to reliably find timed portal vaults (at least in my experience).

Detect Creatures, although not very tactical in *when* to use it, is one of the most tactical spells in the game considering its potential applications. Its 0.5.2 state was very imbalanced, but it was a level 6 spell in some other school(s), the hunger cost would be meaningful enough and it would require experience investment from even dedicated spellcasters. Having it reach full potential at 100 power instead of 50/60 would probably help even more.

I agree that the other divination effects don’t add much to the game (although Detect Items can be fun), and two (or three) worthwhile spells aren’t enough for a whole school… but I don’t see why the more interesting spells can’t be preserved, especially as they don’t overlap with the T&D skill or items too terribly.

If these effects are added to a divination god, I fear there won’t be incentive enough to actually use them (the alternatives being Sif, Vehumet, Trog or Okawaru), but I hope the dev team can prove me wrong.

Yeah, and I’ve seen a vault generated in the Temple with no way to reach it short of controlled teleportation.

(Never lived long enough to find out what’s in it, though.)

–Eino

If you just left Detect Creatures in as, say, a level 5 Necromancy spell (to make it harder to pick up casually; need skills, and can’t use both DC and TSO angel spam, for example), I could take the loss of absolutely everything else. But without Detect Creatures, I’d never have been able to get 15 runes with only 1 rank in fighting; I’m just saying, this increases incentive for me to grind.