Dryad wood, it bears repeating how underpowered it is(give your vote)

[casualPhilosoph]

All this been mentioned before, but to increase the likelihood something is changed:
Same tier as ancient wood but far less construction bonus, less base damage on weapons added to the fact that ancient wood also gives poison damage.
I basically only found three really good items with dryad wood.
1) tear of the nymph for magic, sneaking and hunting challengs, however this item competes with the silver brooche which provides for magic, tactical and social challenges
2) reed flute for social(very specialised)
3) live lianas shell, the lightest type of heavy armor, however compared to dragon shell a medium armor this only makes sense if you want to craft with diamonds to gain armor that provides skill bonus and is still wearably by most people.(So you would need a large amount of diamonds for this to be worthwhile)

Have I forgotten something? Whats your opinion boost or no boost?
And if boost do you think giving it the same construction bonus as ancient wood is enough or do you thinks it needs even more?

[Crim]

Compare Dryad Wood with Dark Wood, You will find they are roughly equally as powerful.
While Ancient Wood is clearly above both.

While I agree that Dark Wood should be stronger than Elven Wood since its a deadend research.
Dryad should definitely be made better.

It would be boring tho to make it just strictly stronger than what it currently is. I rather see it gain a useful stat. Would also be cool if it was given Attract Elf.

[Oberon]

Originally posted by Talamare:

Compare Dryad Wood with Dark Wood, You will find they are roughly equally as powerful.
While Ancient Wood is clearly above both.

While I agree that Dark Wood should be stronger than Elven Wood since its a deadend research.
Dryad should definitely be made better.

It would be boring tho to make it just strictly stronger than what it currently is. I rather see it gain a useful stat. Would also be cool if it was given Attract Elf.

You should'nt research Darkwood at all since you can get a lot of them just by dismanteling loots

[Crim]

Originally posted by NinjaPoutine:

You should'nt research Darkwood at all since you can get a lot of them just by dismanteling loots

Is your point that Dark wood should be worse than Elven wood?
Otherwise your post was basically completely pointless...

[Helios]

I think for it's current strength it's too bloody hard to gather, my best 5 gatherers on turn 250 are not able to get 2 stacks each turn...

Suggestions:

• Put ancient wood in the dark wood branch in the research tree since it's poisonous and has nothing to do with elves and dryads (makes more sense combined with the next point)
  
  
• It would make much more sense to place the damage of dryad weapons
  between ancient wood's (flat + poison) damage and (flat + 2x poison) damage
  so that you could choose between lesser but sure damage (dryad) and more but skill-dependent damage (ancient)
  
  
• This should also be adressed with dark wood weapons, since they are too OP for their tier due to poison damage being additional rather than instead of a big amount of normal damage (elven wood and dark wood have about the same base dam, but dark wood has just poison damage added to that making it objectively better)
  
  
• Think about the name of the items crafted from it. "Living Sword" or "Living Club" for example.
  Dryad wood is the only wood that still lives and is producing sap constantly! Make something of that! You could give a player with a structure made from dryad (living) wood random herbs, twigs, amber, fruits or more dryad wood each turn! A "+1 produce nature's gifts" stat on every building with dryad wood in it. That would compensate for it's inferiority and would be super cool and fitting lorewise!
  
  
• (Cross-)Bows: bows and crossbows are only useful in tactical/hunting/supporting roles. Why not give dark/ancient wood (cross-)bows much less flat damage than elven/dryad wood (cross-)bows but add a lot of "poison" damage for tactical/hunting etc challenges (I don't know what it's called there, one of the various green damage types)

Discuss.

[Crim]

You raise a good point of the fact that Ancient Wood and Dark Wood share the fact they both provide Poison Damage. What if Dark Wood became the requirement for Ancient Wood instead of Elven Wood. Then you would have reason to weaken Dark Wood items, since it's no longer a deadend research line.

[Oberon]

Originally posted by Talamare:

Originally posted by NinjaPoutine:

You should'nt research Darkwood at all since you can get a lot of them just by dismanteling loots

Is your point that Dark wood should be worse than Elven wood?
Otherwise your post was basically completely pointless...

You first said: "While I agree that Dark Wood should be stronger than Elven Wood since its a deadend research."

You should'nt research Darkwood. So who cares if its deadend. They both have different purpose and based on that its not about "being stronger", whatever that means.

Let me know if there's anything else that needs to be clarified. Seems like you are great at talking but not so much with understanding. I might suggest cutting off on the former and focusing on the latter.

[Gemini]

I think the OP left out one major pro of Dryad Wood. It is insanely light. I often use Dryad Wood to make weapon / armor sets for my weak characters (Str 2,3), especially if they have low health and I want to outfit them with a sword, shield, and armor. Even Ancient Wood items are "heavy" compared to Dryad Wood items.

-Gemini

[Ex Mudder]

I'd like to see the building stats of Ancient wood and Dryad Wood switched, so Dryad wood is one of the best at building structures in towns, and ancient wood is not ideal. Also make Dark Wood worse than Elven wood for buildings.

Another idea is if Dark / Ancient is better for weapons, it should be worse for armor / shield / bow.

Dryad Wood should be better than Dark wood for weapons, incl poison damage.

And I would also like to see Ancient Wood moved to require Dark Wood, not Elven Wood.

I agree that there is an awful lot of darkwood items generated by the RNG. Would like to see that toned down.

[aardvarkpepper]

I use Dryad Wood for lightweight shielding. (I see Gemini already mentioned this)

Figure you're running with 16 weight gathering tools and 8 weight double-amber amulet, on a character that has 100 or 150 carry weight limit.

Then figure in armor weight. For armor, heavies - Mithril / Diamond runs 127, Mithril/Mithril about 190; medium scaled runs about 100. That's really heavy stuff. Even lighter armors have considerable weight; you could go spidersilk cloth armor, but that's not particularly *good* armor. Typically your characters with 100-150 carry limit have very low hit points, so you need the best armor you can pack.

Then what about weapons? Dryad Wood / Diamond shield is 30, sword is 20. If I remember right, both offer near the maximum Shielding bonus of 8 each.

==

So now consider, your weight limit is 100-150, you're carrying around tools, ring, armor, and weapons. Probably on a relatively fragile character; high hit point warriors have higher strengths &c.

So what weapon are you going to use? Leshy Hair Pike? But then you're relying heavily on doing damage and your armor; enemy uses First Action or something, and one of their 40-damage-dealing minions gets a hit, and one of your villagers goes down with deadly wounds. Like all right, if it's one of your durable warriors with a boatload of hit points and mithril armor, maybe they don't die outright, but if it's a fragile character, they're going down in one hit every time.

So no probably not Leshy Hair Pike for your fragile character, because even if you are running heavy armor, you don't have great hit points likely to begin with. Likewise any two-handed weapon.

So if you want protection, it's sword and shield, right? and right there is Dryad Wood, ideal. I mean yeah okay you'd ideally want dragonbone / ruby sword and mithril / diamond shield (well maybe) - but those are a LOT heavier, and again we're talking about weight savings and durability to the max.

==

Now yes okay you can do Dragon Bone / Mithril artifact for +4 strength bonus - but that presupposes you've got a pile of dragonbone and mithril sitting around, and can afford a point of tech research into artifacts. Surely you didn't sink a point of research into artifacts just so you could equip one character, right?

==

(edit) - to make it simple, you have carry weight 100-150, you have gathering tools and gathering ring slot combined at 24ish, the villager is sure to be fragile so you want sword and shield. Dryad Wood / Diamond sword and shield provides near maximum shielding bonus so the villager can actually be used in Fight situations. Whatever weight is left goes to the *best* armor you can pack on, maybe the villager can't handle mithril, but the villager is fragile and direly needs protection, so needs the best armor that can be carried.

[casualPhilosoph]

Gemini:t I just saw to many alternative better recipes with the same weight or only minimal weight difference so I only mentioned the heavy armour option, though I must admit dryad wood has a much wider spectrum of light weight options across the board.

NinjaPoutine,Talamare before you guys derail to much:
Ninja your choice of words is unfortunate, there is no law that forbids darkwood to be researched its merely amatter of the current game balance and thats the point that lead to Talamare's frustration because you stated a fact but not how you evaluated that fact in terms of balance,which is the topic we are talking about.
If your point is that frequency of material is a much more relevant measure for balance then research ok, but does that mean you have no opinion if dead end materials of equal frequency with their non dead end counterpart should be stronger or equally strong?
Do you think dark wood should be less frequent, so research rank counts? Do you think its ok if a research is not viable? Your position seems to be that the current balance is ok but I can only infer that it would help if you stated it clearly and how you think proposed changes would be unbalancing

And to clarify strength in this case means base damage, armor, value etc provided in cases in which both materials are neutral.

[Pentalis]

Suggestions that make a lot of sense:
1--Move Ancient Wood to the Dark Wood tree because both are poisonous while Dryad Wood stays with Elven Wood since they're more related.
2--Giving Dryad Wood a bonus related to it still being alive.

Regarding 2, balancing this would be hard, since any bonus to constructions could make Dryad Wood strictly superior to alternatives. For example, giving Dryad Wood the same +attract elf would make it strictly better than Elven Wood, well, except for the fact Elven Wood is more easily gathered.
A +Folklore bonus to armor and items made with Dryad Wood could be interesting, this would give a chance to build quite interesting Social and Hex challenge characters.

Now, if someone asked me: what would you really give Dryad Wood to make it good?

I'd make it as easy to gather as Elven Wood, watch as it suddenly becomes a fantastic material (maybe reduce its Research Bonus a little while at it, otherwise it becomes an exploit).

[casualPhilosoph]

Originally posted by aardvarkpepper:

I use Dryad Wood for lightweight shielding. (I see Gemini already mentioned this)

So if you want protection, it's sword and shield, right? and right there is Dryad Wood, ideal. I mean yeah okay you'd ideally want dragonbone / ruby sword and mithril / diamond shield (well maybe) - but those are a LOT heavier, and again we're talking about weight savings and durability to the max.

Ahh shields, yeah i overlooked those i have to admit ^^

[Itkovian]

I never research Dryad Wood, but what I get from quests/fights, I find very useful in crafting random things.

[WithAThousandFaces]

Originally posted by aardvarkpepper:

So what weapon are you going to use? Leshy Hair Pike? But then you're relying heavily on doing damage and your armor; enemy uses First Action or something, and one of their 40-damage-dealing minions gets a hit, and one of your villagers goes down with deadly wounds. Like all right, if it's one of your durable warriors with a boatload of hit points and mithril armor, maybe they don't die outright, but if it's a fragile character, they're going down in one hit every time.

So no probably not Leshy Hair Pike for your fragile character, because even if you are running heavy armor, you don't have great hit points likely to begin with. Likewise any two-handed weapon.

Leshy Hair + Dragon Shell = 136 weight, +26 armor. Works pretty well on craftsmen and medics, in my experience. You do STR+32/38 damage in the first round, and you can tank reasonably well.

Dryad wood's main use in my games is being combined with mid-tier metals (steel, gold) to create +4 crafting tools, allowing me to reserve my precious ancient wood for better purposes. It's great for that. :)

[ap.trash]

Originally posted by Helios:

Think about the name of the items crafted from it. "Living Sword" or "Living Club" for example.
Dryad wood is the only wood that still lives and is producing sap constantly! Make something of that! You could give a player with a structure made from dryad (living) wood random herbs, twigs, amber, fruits or more dryad wood each turn! A "+1 produce nature's gifts" stat on every building with dryad wood in it. That would compensate for it's inferiority and would be super cool and fitting lorewise!

This is a really great idea! Two thumbs up.

Originally posted by Helios:

(Cross-)Bows: bows and crossbows are only useful in tactical/hunting/supporting roles. Why not give dark/ancient wood (cross-)bows much less flat damage than elven/dryad wood (cross-)bows but add a lot of "poison" damage for tactical/hunting etc challenges (I don't know what it's called there, one of the various green damage types)

My guess is, the game engine does not support that...

Originally posted by Justinianus:

Dryad wood's main use in my games is being combined with mid-tier metals (steel, gold) to create +4 crafting tools, allowing me to reserve my precious ancient wood for better purposes. It's great for that. :)

That IS true. I use it exactly like that.