Hooks are really imbalanced on legacy characters

[Green riding hood]

I have tried a few different hooks and their opportunity quests and the only permanent changes they bring to a character is either a weapon, transformation or permanent stat increase.

For a warrior spelltouched adds pure bonuses. +stunt, +potency, +retirement age being the most important one. With only a -0.5 decrease in bonus damage. But because most abilities use potency + bonus damage the end result is a +1.5 increase.

The worst downside is that they look blue. I dont like at all and i could say i dont care about potency and stunt as long as they look good but without the +retirement age they retire way too quickly compared to a mystic and a hunter.

Now why spelltouched is mentioned is because certain hooks make spelltouched impossible.
Mysterious, Inhabited, Dreamer, Destiny all conflict with this event.

So if you want to make a meta warrior these four hooks are already out.

Now for permanent stat increases.
Weird hook can add either 0.7 potency or 0.5 health/0.5 warding/0.5 armor.
These can be considered small stuff but overall a +0.7 potency is huge overall considering all abilities use potency. And because there is no downside there is no reason to not take weird on every character you possess. A mystic not having weird will always be worse then a weird mystic just by stats.

The other to add a permanent stat increase is the shame hook.
This one can add a permanent +1 health to any hero. This one doesnt have pure upsides like weird, for one, it has an event that forces you to do a rollcheck to see if they become inhabited or not. But people that are familiar with inhabited its not actually that bad to begin with. It can even be cured and reward you with an amazing weapon. And compared to how difficult it is to get the shadow transformation, you would purposely take the shame hook just for this alone.

These are the only hooks i found that add a pure stat increase with barely any downsides attached.

For the others, the majority only add a line of text in their history. Its more like flavor text.
And for the others that add bonus events you get either a random equipment, or temporary stat increases.

Compared to rng events that get you random temporary items or flavor text, getting pure permanent stat increase is too good to pass up.

This isnt to bash the other hooks. I love roleplaying and took hooks that i thought would fit my characters the first time i played. But after learning that spelltouched conflicts with my first myserious warrior i felt like never using it again.

In my opinion they could just scrap the +10 retirement age on spelltouched and give every warrior a +5 retirement age to begin with and keep the +potency +stunt increase on spelltouched for people that want that buff.

About the hooks. I really like how they change a character but knowing that shame and weird just gives permanent buffs makes me more inclined to just take that on every character so i dont feel like they're weak.

I dont think a lot of people agree that +stats make you more compelled to take certain hooks over roleplaying a character in a videogame because thats what wildermyth kinda is.
But its rpg aspect leave a bad taste in my mouth whenever i make a new character and end up not taking the pure +stat because i wanna add Proud and Lucky on a snark mystic.

Maybe make the other hooks give specific permanent +stats like coward +0.5 speed and bookish +0.8 warding.

This might make the imbalance worse between hooks but to me having the choice of making a meta character and choosing hooks that improve certain builds. And the other choosing roleplay specific hooks and still be rewarded for choosing those hooks seem preferable to hooks that only add flavor text and temporary items.

[Nathan Panda]

I won't say imbalanced, but I know that an integrity hook on a mystic is a pretty good idea.

Only downside is that your character will look like an evil lich (I actually like that, so it really isn't a bad thing to me) and it's one of the rare hooks that is related to an opportunity quest. Hence if your character has done all three, then you'll need to just level a new mystic with the aforementioned hook and don't promote until you get the event (To Humble Ends).

The big draws are that your mystic will never retire now and you spend less on gear, since the character cannot equip main hand weapons / off- hand items, but the extra potency + warding from the transformation more or less ensures that your magic user is just as effective in the late game as one with a level 3 weapon.

[Green riding hood]

I havent done an evil lich mystic yet for my builds. The wiki says it adds +4 spell damage. But the weapon adds +4 potency. So i dont know if the evil lich has either both or just one of those on a full transformation?
What build do you use on the evil lich mystic?

About that retirement age. I dont think mystics really care about retirement age lol.

[RIB BLUP]

Originalmente postado por Nathan Panda:

I won't say imbalanced, but I know that an integrity hook on a mystic is a pretty good idea.

Only downside is that your character will look like an evil lich (I actually like that, so it really isn't a bad thing to me) and it's one of the rare hooks that is related to an opportunity quest. Hence if your character has done all three, then you'll need to just level a new mystic with the aforementioned hook and don't promote until you get the event (To Humble Ends).

The big draws are that your mystic will never retire now and you spend less on gear, since the character cannot equip main hand weapons / off- hand items, but the extra potency + warding from the transformation more or less ensures that your magic user is just as effective in the late game as one with a level 3 weapon.

It's funny, for the longest time I thought mystics were the only one that could get that transformation. I recently got it on a hunter though and it's pretty amazing on hunter as well.

[Nathan Panda]

Originalmente postado por Green riding hood:

I havent done an evil lich mystic yet for my builds. The wiki says it adds +4 spell damage. But the weapon adds +4 potency. So i dont know if the evil lich has either both or just one of those on a full transformation?
What build do you use on the evil lich mystic?

About that retirement age. I dont think mystics really care about retirement age lol.

Well, it won't exactly maximize the damage, but it will be consistently high which is good enough.

Also, powerful mystic build uses ignite / ignite+ / Open Mind / Open mind+ / Long Reach. You'll just be able to flank so much more with interfusions and conjure fire at will to manipulate around the battlefield.

[Nathan Panda]

Originalmente postado por RIB BLUP:

Originalmente postado por Nathan Panda:

I won't say imbalanced, but I know that an integrity hook on a mystic is a pretty good idea.

Only downside is that your character will look like an evil lich (I actually like that, so it really isn't a bad thing to me) and it's one of the rare hooks that is related to an opportunity quest. Hence if your character has done all three, then you'll need to just level a new mystic with the aforementioned hook and don't promote until you get the event (To Humble Ends).

The big draws are that your mystic will never retire now and you spend less on gear, since the character cannot equip main hand weapons / off- hand items, but the extra potency + warding from the transformation more or less ensures that your magic user is just as effective in the late game as one with a level 3 weapon.

It's funny, for the longest time I thought mystics were the only one that could get that transformation. I recently got it on a hunter though and it's pretty amazing on hunter as well.

Oh yes, that rocks on a melee hunter as well since that skeletal dagger has some nasty damage output.

[RIB BLUP]

Originalmente postado por Nathan Panda:

Originalmente postado por RIB BLUP:

It's funny, for the longest time I thought mystics were the only one that could get that transformation. I recently got it on a hunter though and it's pretty amazing on hunter as well.

Oh yes, that rocks on a melee hunter as well since that skeletal dagger has some nasty damage output.

More than that. I never see anyone talk about Flashcone but it's pretty strong on a trap based hunter. Used on a Skeleton? It becomes obscene.

[Green riding hood]

I got my own integrity mystic to collect more intel. On the integrity hook quest you get the option to either keep the dagger or destroy it. If you decide to keep it you can either equip or recycle it i dont think it matters at this point.
The dagger itself will be T3 with 2 warding and 4 spell damage. No potency.

At the end of the campaign it will fully transform into a skeleton removing the handheld dagger and replacing it with the skeleton right arm wielding a cosmetic one and having the same stats. 2 warding 4 spell damage.

From what i gathered warrior has no abilities that uses spell damage. Neither does general abilities have it. All interfusion abilities that deal damage use spell damage. The only hunter ability that uses spell damage is flashcone. Ignite also uses spelldamage, which is separate from fireleash.

The skeleton mystic gains the ability dagger strike which functions the same as a normal dagger. x2 damage if flanking.
5 + (bonus damage + potency) :2 This can be upgraded to 6 + (bonus damage + potency)

Mystic:
Level 5:
6 + (2.2 bonus damage + 5.2 potency) = 6 + 7.4 = 13 damage
Level 7:
6 + (2.8 bonus damage + 6.6 potency) = 6 + 9.4 = 15 damage

Hunter:
Level 5:
6 + (3 bonus damage + 3.4 potency) = 6 + 6.4 = 12 damage
Level 7:
6 + (4 bonus damage + 4.6 potency) = 6 + 8.6 = 14 damage

Warrior:
Level 5:
6 + (3.8 bonus damage + 2.6 potency) = 6 + 6.4 = 12 damage
Level 7:
6 + (5 bonus damage + 3.4 potency) = 6 + 8.4 = 14 damage



So skeleton builds have either hunter + flashcone or hunter + melee builds.
Mystic + arches/ignite/naturalist/mythweaver/humanist/earthscribe builds.
Warrior dagger builds

Indignance, spiritblade, quellingmoss, vigorflow dont use spell damage so it'd be odd to make such skeleton builds. Vigorflow can be an exception because of dagger strike.

You also cant change the colour of its limbs and skull of the skeleton. Only thing that can be changed is its torso colour.

It also gets Inscrutable Stare. This is treated as a turn ending attack. This can be repeated if used with heroism. Enemies will be forced to run away on their turn without attacking.
Its range is 5 tiles and can only target one enemy for each attack.
For some reason they suffer 2 damage the first time it is used?
Its accuracy is 97%-100% and can be done every turn so you could cheese enemies with this.

[Green riding hood]

Btw skeletons have 0 relationships with any character. You cant do rival or romance combos with a skeleton. I think this means you cant do hook opportunity quests anymore because they need one partner. So you cant proc a lot of events anymore.

[Underprivileged White Male]

Originalmente postado por Green riding hood:

I have tried a few different hooks and their opportunity quests and the only permanent changes they bring to a character is either a weapon, transformation or permanent stat increase.

For a warrior spelltouched adds pure bonuses. +stunt, +potency, +retirement age being the most important one. With only a -0.5 decrease in bonus damage. But because most abilities use potency + bonus damage the end result is a +1.5 increase.

The worst downside is that they look blue. I dont like at all and i could say i dont care about potency and stunt as long as they look good but without the +retirement age they retire way too quickly compared to a mystic and a hunter.

Now why spelltouched is mentioned is because certain hooks make spelltouched impossible.
Mysterious, Inhabited, Dreamer, Destiny all conflict with this event.

So if you want to make a meta warrior these four hooks are already out.

Now for permanent stat increases.
Weird hook can add either 0.7 potency or 0.5 health/0.5 warding/0.5 armor.
These can be considered small stuff but overall a +0.7 potency is huge overall considering all abilities use potency. And because there is no downside there is no reason to not take weird on every character you possess. A mystic not having weird will always be worse then a weird mystic just by stats.

The other to add a permanent stat increase is the shame hook.
This one can add a permanent +1 health to any hero. This one doesnt have pure upsides like weird, for one, it has an event that forces you to do a rollcheck to see if they become inhabited or not. But people that are familiar with inhabited its not actually that bad to begin with. It can even be cured and reward you with an amazing weapon. And compared to how difficult it is to get the shadow transformation, you would purposely take the shame hook just for this alone.

These are the only hooks i found that add a pure stat increase with barely any downsides attached.

For the others, the majority only add a line of text in their history. Its more like flavor text.
And for the others that add bonus events you get either a random equipment, or temporary stat increases.

Compared to rng events that get you random temporary items or flavor text, getting pure permanent stat increase is too good to pass up.

This isnt to bash the other hooks. I love roleplaying and took hooks that i thought would fit my characters the first time i played. But after learning that spelltouched conflicts with my first myserious warrior i felt like never using it again.

In my opinion they could just scrap the +10 retirement age on spelltouched and give every warrior a +5 retirement age to begin with and keep the +potency +stunt increase on spelltouched for people that want that buff.

About the hooks. I really like how they change a character but knowing that shame and weird just gives permanent buffs makes me more inclined to just take that on every character so i dont feel like they're weak.

I dont think a lot of people agree that +stats make you more compelled to take certain hooks over roleplaying a character in a videogame because thats what wildermyth kinda is.
But its rpg aspect leave a bad taste in my mouth whenever i make a new character and end up not taking the pure +stat because i wanna add Proud and Lucky on a snark mystic.

Maybe make the other hooks give specific permanent +stats like coward +0.5 speed and bookish +0.8 warding.

This might make the imbalance worse between hooks but to me having the choice of making a meta character and choosing hooks that improve certain builds. And the other choosing roleplay specific hooks and still be rewarded for choosing those hooks seem preferable to hooks that only add flavor text and temporary items.

Here is a trick. Hit random until you don't mind how the characters look. Then hit play. You can meta game the fun out of every RPG ever made. So don't do it.

[Nathan Panda]

Hmm....didn't know that the skeletal theme meant that there can be no more relationships.

Nevertheless, I only really took the theme since it was powerful on its own with a Mythwalker mystic. Granted, it will not work that well on a melee Mystic, but with ignite and interfusions, the damage is powerful enough even on the hardest difficulty. i mostly ignore the dagger and state unless I want to mess around a bit.

As for min/max builds, I choose not to do that here since I felt that aiming for one specific theme alone is plenty frustrating already. Though I think the wiki does state an editor which you could use to make the process much more trivial.

Personally, my endgame builds do not include full transformations (apart from the lich) since I always am looking for more range on my hunters so bows are preferred, and my warriors wouldn't survive that long if it weren't for their leaf enchanted weapons.

Overall, I'd classify complete transformations as having more of a flavour effect. For truly practical results, I'd only take partial transformations for the stat boosts and not risk changing the entire playstyle of a hero.

I

[Green riding hood]

I'm in the process of making builds purely to survive wander lunch difficulty with 40 calamities and above. I have leaf weapon warriors and water bow hunters but i cant upgrade all weapons by chapter 2 so it gets a bit difficult. So now i'm trying out full transformation builds because they dont need materials and can deal enough damage to kill 4 tile enemies.

The full transformation builds are good for filling slots and participate in combat alongside my non fully transformed characters. Though only a few have good results.
Transforming a character sorta ruins them in a bad way with -speed -no leaf weapon -block and other debuffs so you either selectively keep transformations with bonuses or make builds that makes transformations stronger.

Wolftouched warrior + broadswipe + frenzy+ can do 30 damage AoE. Combine that with long reach and we have a blender.
Fully transformed flamesoul warrior gets +2 warding and a flame of cone. Use that with paladin+ and vigilance+ and we have a warrior that can target a lot of foes in a corridor and kill 4 targets coming in melee.
Beartouched hunter can deal more damage then a thornfang hunter without flanking support so i can let them let loose a lot more. + bearhug can stun 4tile enemies which is a bonus.
Fully transformed sylvan mystic has invigorating and witherbolt a ranged 3 mob hitting attack. I mostly use it with aid+ to turn the fully transformed warriors into 50 HP strong warriors so they dont need leaf weapons but it has its uses with naturalist+ and arches stalling enemies very well. It might work better without witherbolt because this one is mainly support so its not 'optimized' but still one of my favorites.

I've recently done a skeleton mystic because integrity hook quest procced first among the three. Though there arent really many builds for skeletons so i tried a spiritblade+ aid+ bard build. Kinda like a priest lol.
Took me a while to figure out skeleton doesnt buff either of those abilities haha.

[Lampros]

Originalmente postado por Green riding hood:

Now for permanent stat increases.
Weird hook can add either 0.7 potency or 0.5 health/0.5 warding/0.5 armor.
These can be considered small stuff but overall a +0.7 potency is huge overall considering all abilities use potency. And because there is no downside there is no reason to not take weird on every character you possess. A mystic not having weird will always be worse then a weird mystic just by stats.

The other to add a permanent stat increase is the shame hook.
This one can add a permanent +1 health to any hero. This one doesnt have pure upsides like weird, for one, it has an event that forces you to do a rollcheck to see if they become inhabited or not. But people that are familiar with inhabited its not actually that bad to begin with. It can even be cured and reward you with an amazing weapon. And compared to how difficult it is to get the shadow transformation, you would purposely take the shame hook just for this alone.

These are the only hooks i found that add a pure stat increase with barely any downsides attached.

Slacker can permanently add +15 Charisma or Tenacity. The trouble is that I don't know how beneficial they are! ;0