If it isn't too much of a bother, could you please merge this with the grimmest mod?
I tried to do it myself but I got some error stating that it couldn't find the required "templates", I'm not sure how to resolve this error, and this just seems like the perfect mod to play grimmest with because for normal difficulty you are just too OP, more mods and bosses to fight with your pet army would be great
I like it so far. As for some things you talk about in your "Design Concept for Undead Master" you could use skills simaler to Spectral Binding as they take a pernment set of energy to keep up. as for making it so they cant be a death knight gohst try making those skills into Exclusive Skill.
Thank you for your feedback and suggestions. Each skill is created with a database record that has a software class (as opposed to an RPG class). That class dictates how the DBR is handled by the game. A skill that summons has a different class than does a toggled skill like Spectral Binding. The nature of a summons class doesn't allow for energy reservations. I did try testing summoning as a proc with skills that have an energy reservation or ongoing cost and it didn't work. I don't recall if the summon never triggered or if it wasn't dismissed when the toggled skill was turned off. Since that time I have learned a lot more about modding and plan to revisit this method before I release the version with the vampire line.
Regarding making the T9 skills in each line an exclusive skill, I considered this. The problem is that an exclusive skill is universally exclusive as opposed to mastery exclusive. This means that you can only ever have one exclusive skill active across both of your masteries (assuming you have picked a second one). There may be some exclusive skill from another mastery that pairs really well with the Undead Master T9 skill and I may not want to prevent the two. Also from what I saw in my early concept work, all of the DBRs that allowed an exclusive setting were skills that were toggled on or off. You don't stop being a vampire or ghost so if you take the skill, I don't want to be something you turn on and off.
I'm finishing up work on Gate and then I'll be revisiting Death Knight before moving onto the raven vinculum/vampire line. I'll be taking a more in-depth look at how exclusive skills work and maybe I'll come up with a different approach.
I love trying out new mods. Especially pet mods. Decided to give this one a try havent gotten very far yet. I like it.
I wasnt crazy about being able to spam 100 rats etc. So as you updated I decided to make a clean char and restart. Thought I would skip those type and just stick with skels etc. but you have to choose rats to get the rest in that line. I was thinking you need a priest skel to heal your pets and theres one in game already. That annoying one that likes to heal your target till you find him and kill him. He would be perfect. Say maybe use him in place of the rats.
And make a separate line called pestilence under the skels line maybe? Heck throw in spiders and maybe those maggets from forgotten gods? make more of a poison line. Let us choose lol.
Another comment is I dont feel im spamming them too much yet. Well going to play your mod see how far I get today.
Edit: Forgot to mention I have eye problems so I like your icons for the skels makes it easy to figure out what youve lost. On spamming I also have reg necro going as well. I spam more those skels then yours like that. The one I seem to spam the most is the bug one the cloud forgot what it was called. Ill probably drop it and put that point elsewhere. I just did the warden lol died just as I killed him. Was trying to summon & kite & hit the heal pot too late but its nice to know bosses are doable.
Thank you for the feedback. If you read the article, "Design Concept for Undead Master" you'll get a better idea for what I'm working towards. I won't rehash the entire thing but just to elaborate on a couple of points...
The first pet in each "line" is designed to establish a theme and lore. I wanted a swarm of rats, a swarm of bats (had to settle for ravens), a swarm of insects, etc. The best way to get that given the tools I have to work with is to enable you summon a bunch. They're handy in the early levels and not so much later on but with some creativity I suspect some interesting strategies could be worked out.
A priest skeleton is something I considered but all of the undead units and the Undead Master have a life stealing ability that increases by 1% per level so I think a caster of another sort is better suited. I've been thinking of changing it from a DPS caster to a support caster (buffs, crowd control, debufs, whatever). I don't think I'm going to revisit that pet though until I've got the other lines completed.
Regarding a pestilence line, yeah, that's what I have intended with the line that starts with the insect swarm. It'll be a plague lord line with insects such as spiders, maggots, etc.
I've considered what to do about combining the standard necro with the Undead Master. I decided I didn't want to remove the standard classes and if combining the standard necro with the Undead Master makes for an unbalanced experience it's the player's choice on whether that's the experience they want to have or not. I personally haven't played that combination yet so I'd appreciate your feedback on the experience.
Yeah, the insect swarm and other introductory pets such as Argos haven't really been properly spec'd out yet. They're more of a teaser right now.
I've got a lot of work to do still so stay tuned. A lot of it has been foundational behind the scenes work that doesn't show much on the front end but most of that is just about done and I'll be able to make more obvious progress such as adding additional pets and skills.
ps. Regarding the icons, if you have problems with the other icons that aren't higher color contrast, maybe try one of the various color blindness settings. I've seen on the forums that some people that aren't color blind like to use those other settings for this reason. The Grim Internals tool also has a cool down counter that can be helpful for keeping track of summons. It doesn't show the number of each summoned pet for the skill once the timer has expired but it does show that the summon skill is up if at least one pet that was summoned by the skill is still alive.
cool read your thing. interesting Im looking forward to trying it. and I was saying I liked your icons they are good visually. Just did the next boss didnt die, had to kite alot. Im the glass cannon. Pets seem to be doing better then me. Rereading other respones etc. One that I always wanted was a poison type of summoner with spiders, different kinds etc. To go with Bys (whatever cant spell) that spider goddess. But not having to spam like that witch doctor. I want pets that are more permanent I hate spamming alot. Good luck with your ideas.
It works great for the player. I originally designed it for a pet but it didn't work out well. Units charmed by your pets are your pet’s units not yours. You will not earn XP for their kills. They also stick around when the pet is dismissed or killed instead of breaking the charm. However, they will not move except to engage a hostile in their range.
Hello your mod looks awesome , reading your mod info that I could find (articles and pictures and some change logs)are you planning on adding summons overhauls to other preexisting masteries or just let them be? Wouldn't it be easier (idk I'm just a dork) to put all the summon skills into one big mastery like all the jagets skill too into one big mastery and so on with the elememtal and physical, piercing, cultic(aether,chaotic, poison vitality)(that just a silly idea of me ) idk your undead master was giving the vibe that you were tired of having to horrible synergy between masteries in vanilla and wanted to have a class that had all the summons the birdo, doggo, and thorny and skeles.(silly thoughts) It seem like you were having thoughts on how to balance out the player when it came to summons How about a health/energy reserved similar to toggles auruas?(lore: your energy fuels your summons due to the cost of the bond you become fragile) Or a attack debuff?
I'm glad that your adding mastery specific resistance's and vulnerabilities. It really adds a layer of customization, a cultist that is resilient to chaotic powers because he knows how they work and is able to dispell choas a bit before the final the attack connects and a brain sword guy(soldier..... Couldn't remember what they were call) who has built up some physical defense thru years of close combat and therefore hardy . Keep up the work man!! Those were just some silly ideas no need to listen to them I apologise if I sounded like I was trying to boss you around, I mean no disrespect Have a great one
The only changes I will make to preexisting masteries are changes that must be made to align them with my game mechanic changes. For example, when I removed the attribute and level requirements for equipment, that required me to modify the mastery skill for each class.
The Undead Master is definitely a pet class. However, its role isn't to unify all of the existing summons under one mastery. This is a necromancy class that primarily focuses on undead. That will be more obvious when I work on the other vinculum branches and add ghouls, vampires, ghosts, etc. Future class concepts include an elementalist that also summons elementals and a mage that also has a few monster summoning skills. Maybe I'll do a dedicated summoner too with a variety of different pet options beyond necrotic.
Regarding health or energy reservations tied to the pets, yeah, I'd like to do that but I don't see anyway to do so. I've researched it and found many others had the same idea and none that I could find have been able to do so. On the back end of mod development, the skills that have a reservation are based on different templates with different options than what are available to "pet spawn" templates and options. Right now, the game "balancing" is coming down to the player deciding on what type of experience they want. If you want to run around with hundreds of pets or one, the choice is yours. After a certain point the risk to your character is practically non-existent. Some will find that boring. Others will be looking for exactly that experience because they want to lead an army of darkness.
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I tried to do it myself but I got some error stating that it couldn't find the required "templates", I'm not sure how to resolve this error, and this just seems like the perfect mod to play grimmest with because for normal difficulty you are just too OP, more mods and bosses to fight with your pet army would be great
Regarding making the T9 skills in each line an exclusive skill, I considered this. The problem is that an exclusive skill is universally exclusive as opposed to mastery exclusive. This means that you can only ever have one exclusive skill active across both of your masteries (assuming you have picked a second one). There may be some exclusive skill from another mastery that pairs really well with the Undead Master T9 skill and I may not want to prevent the two. Also from what I saw in my early concept work, all of the DBRs that allowed an exclusive setting were skills that were toggled on or off. You don't stop being a vampire or ghost so if you take the skill, I don't want to be something you turn on and off.
I'm finishing up work on Gate and then I'll be revisiting Death Knight before moving onto the raven vinculum/vampire line. I'll be taking a more in-depth look at how exclusive skills work and maybe I'll come up with a different approach.
I wasnt crazy about being able to spam 100 rats etc. So as you updated I decided to make a clean char and restart. Thought I would skip those type and just stick with skels etc. but you have to choose rats to get the rest in that line. I was thinking you need a priest skel to heal your pets and theres one in game already. That annoying one that likes to heal your target till you find him and kill him. He would be perfect. Say maybe use him in place of the rats.
And make a separate line called pestilence under the skels line maybe? Heck throw in spiders and maybe those maggets from forgotten gods? make more of a poison line. Let us choose lol.
Another comment is I dont feel im spamming them too much yet. Well going to play your mod see how far I get today.
Edit: Forgot to mention I have eye problems so I like your icons for the skels makes it easy to figure out what youve lost. On spamming I also have reg necro going as well. I spam more those skels then yours like that. The one I seem to spam the most is the bug one the cloud forgot what it was called. Ill probably drop it and put that point elsewhere.
I just did the warden lol died just as I killed him. Was trying to summon & kite & hit the heal pot too late but its nice to know bosses are doable.
The first pet in each "line" is designed to establish a theme and lore. I wanted a swarm of rats, a swarm of bats (had to settle for ravens), a swarm of insects, etc. The best way to get that given the tools I have to work with is to enable you summon a bunch. They're handy in the early levels and not so much later on but with some creativity I suspect some interesting strategies could be worked out.
A priest skeleton is something I considered but all of the undead units and the Undead Master have a life stealing ability that increases by 1% per level so I think a caster of another sort is better suited. I've been thinking of changing it from a DPS caster to a support caster (buffs, crowd control, debufs, whatever). I don't think I'm going to revisit that pet though until I've got the other lines completed.
Regarding a pestilence line, yeah, that's what I have intended with the line that starts with the insect swarm. It'll be a plague lord line with insects such as spiders, maggots, etc.
I've considered what to do about combining the standard necro with the Undead Master. I decided I didn't want to remove the standard classes and if combining the standard necro with the Undead Master makes for an unbalanced experience it's the player's choice on whether that's the experience they want to have or not. I personally haven't played that combination yet so I'd appreciate your feedback on the experience.
Yeah, the insect swarm and other introductory pets such as Argos haven't really been properly spec'd out yet. They're more of a teaser right now.
I've got a lot of work to do still so stay tuned. A lot of it has been foundational behind the scenes work that doesn't show much on the front end but most of that is just about done and I'll be able to make more obvious progress such as adding additional pets and skills.
ps. Regarding the icons, if you have problems with the other icons that aren't higher color contrast, maybe try one of the various color blindness settings. I've seen on the forums that some people that aren't color blind like to use those other settings for this reason. The Grim Internals tool also has a cool down counter that can be helpful for keeping track of summons. It doesn't show the number of each summoned pet for the skill once the timer has expired but it does show that the summon skill is up if at least one pet that was summoned by the skill is still alive.
Just did the next boss didnt die, had to kite alot. Im the glass cannon. Pets seem to be doing better then me.
Rereading other respones etc. One that I always wanted was a poison type of summoner with spiders, different kinds etc. To go with Bys (whatever cant spell) that spider goddess. But not having to spam like that witch doctor. I want pets that are more permanent I hate spamming alot.
Good luck with your ideas.
Wouldn't it be easier (idk I'm just a dork) to put all the summon skills into one big mastery like all the jagets skill too into one big mastery and so on with the elememtal and physical, piercing, cultic(aether,chaotic, poison vitality)(that just a silly idea of me ) idk your undead master was giving the vibe that you were tired of having to horrible synergy between masteries in vanilla and wanted to have a class that had all the summons the birdo, doggo, and thorny and skeles.(silly thoughts)
It seem like you were having thoughts on how to balance out the player when it came to summons
How about a health/energy reserved similar to toggles auruas?(lore: your energy fuels your summons due to the cost of the bond you become fragile)
Or a attack debuff?
I'm glad that your adding mastery specific resistance's and vulnerabilities. It really adds a layer of customization, a cultist that is resilient to chaotic powers because he knows how they work and is able to dispell choas a bit before the final the attack connects and a brain sword guy(soldier..... Couldn't remember what they were call) who has built up some physical defense thru years of close combat and therefore hardy .
Keep up the work man!! Those were just some silly ideas no need to listen to them
I apologise if I sounded like I was trying to boss you around,
I mean no disrespect
Have a great one
The only changes I will make to preexisting masteries are changes that must be made to align them with my game mechanic changes. For example, when I removed the attribute and level requirements for equipment, that required me to modify the mastery skill for each class.
The Undead Master is definitely a pet class. However, its role isn't to unify all of the existing summons under one mastery. This is a necromancy class that primarily focuses on undead. That will be more obvious when I work on the other vinculum branches and add ghouls, vampires, ghosts, etc. Future class concepts include an elementalist that also summons elementals and a mage that also has a few monster summoning skills. Maybe I'll do a dedicated summoner too with a variety of different pet options beyond necrotic.
Regarding health or energy reservations tied to the pets, yeah, I'd like to do that but I don't see anyway to do so. I've researched it and found many others had the same idea and none that I could find have been able to do so. On the back end of mod development, the skills that have a reservation are based on different templates with different options than what are available to "pet spawn" templates and options. Right now, the game "balancing" is coming down to the player deciding on what type of experience they want. If you want to run around with hundreds of pets or one, the choice is yours. After a certain point the risk to your character is practically non-existent. Some will find that boring. Others will be looking for exactly that experience because they want to lead an army of darkness.
I appreciate all feedback.
_\/\/ Live long and prosper.