Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Psycho]

I am convinced that Boots of Antaeus are the best option for replacing blood stones. Here are two possible solutions, but paths and gem costs should be discussed. I prefer the second, but think that gem costs should be higher due to reinvig and regen effects which make it a good SC/thug equipment item.

1) Same paths and cost as boots

#selectitem 201               -- Boots of Antaeus
#constlevel 6
#name "Stone of Antaeus"
#descr "Some flavor text"
#copyspr 255                  -- Blood stone sprite
#type 8                       -- Misc item
#end

2) With blood stone's paths and cost

#selectitem 201               -- Boots of Antaeus
#constlevel 6
#mainpath 7		      --
#mainlevel 3		      -- B3
#secondarypath 3	      --
#secondarylevel 2	      -- E2
#name "Blood Stone"
#descr "Some flavor text"
#copyspr 255                  -- Blood stone sprite
#type 8                       -- Misc item
#end

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Psycho

Why does nobody mention the boots of antaues? They seem like the least disruptive option to me. Just some regen and reinvigoration on top of +1 earth.

Just some regeneration and reinvigoration? Possibly the two best SC survival abilities? On misc slot?

The idea of the Pebble Skin Suit is that it has drawbacks and is in general an intresting item. If the options are Tome of Gaia/Boots of Antaneus/Pebble Skin Suit, the suit will have smallest effect and is hardest to abuse. Remember that getting turned into a troll isn't that awesome in all cases, not even for humans. Your mr gets reduced, you lose all other innate abilities (like the innate forgebonus for Ulm or FR and heat for Abysia). You become a bigger target with that additional hp, allowing the opponent to pinpoint your casters with spells (try incinerate with that -50% FR) or "attack largest" commands. Also remember that when you are a troll with the suit, you have base -50% in both FR and CR in all battles.

And even if the Troll transformation gets somehow abused (although I'm not seeing it), we can just edit the "Troll" unit to have -1 magicskill in all paths.

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

Just some regeneration and reinvigoration? Possibly the two best SC survival abilities? On misc slot?

I know, but I just don't like the trollification and cursed effects. It's fine on national mages, but what about earth kings or tartarians. Do you think it would be such a superb item with E4B4 or E4N3 paths?

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Psycho

I know, but I just don't like the trollification and cursed effects. It's fine on national mages, but what about earth kings or tartarians. Do you think it would be such a superb item with E4B4 or E4N3 paths?

And making the second booster cost 30+ gems would kind miss the point completely (why not just forge elemental staves then?). The idea is to allow the nations that were hit hardest by the Blood Stone nerf (Ulm and Agartha) access to a secondary earth booster. How in the heck can they forge E4N3 item? Getting into blood 2 for stones is easy, just send scouts to hunt and empower. Not so much for nature.

Anyways, this argument is quite moot, since Squirreloid has a good point about the N boosting of ToG being a bit rebundant. It would likely have the least effect on the game and can be inexpensive enough on N to be somewhat forgeable by Ulm and Agartha.

I'm still for Pebble Skin Suit, thought. It's such an intresting and intriguing item and I just simply love it. Forged it everytime I've been able to do so.

[chrispedersen]

My solution was to change agartha and ulm.

[kianduatha]

Nice, but I don't understand how making it a perfect caster/SC item would be inherently superior. People would put that Stone of Antaeus on commanders that didn't even have earth magic. And it basically means that nature is no longer necessary to get regen on your SCs.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

I´m also behind the pebble skin suit rather than tome of gaia.

But honestly I don´t think Ulm or any other strong earth nation is weakened by the loss of a second earth booster.

I think of it this way: With no gem gens the only way to "generate gems" is to use dvarwen hammers. This favours earth nations, a lot. And without a second earth booster it will be even harder for non earth nations to forge enough hammers, increasing this advantage.

Hardly any nation ever needs blood stones to forge dwarven hammers.
Either you get to earth-2. Then you can forge dwarven hammers with earth boots. Or you don't. Then you can't make bloodstones.
Theoretically if you get to earth-1 you can trade for earth boots, make a bloodstone and forge dwarven hammers. In my experience people are asking for dwarven hammers directly if they don't want the bloodstones for gem genning.
The uses that I got out of the booster part of bloodstones was really only to reach high level earth spells or have some more in need. For that reason I'm against a cursed replacement booster.

For Ulm this is even more significant with their innate forge bonus, Ulm is now the undisputed master of gem saving in a world where gems just became a lot more valuable.

Gems are not more valuable through scareness, since they are not a market commodity (you usually don't compete with other people buying gems for money).
With 40 gems Ulm's forge bonus saves theoretically 10. With 80 20.
Compare this with Niefel where are Jarl saves you ~ 25 (assuming that it is roughly on par with a Bane Lord + ring of regen + boots of the messenger) while costing 500gp, it is clear that forge bonus is better the higher the gem to gold ratio is.

[Squirrelloid]

See, i'd say ToG has the smallest effect because the existence of *yet another* way to boost N in a misc slot has almost no effect on the game, since only an oracle/blood fountain has enough misc slots to use them all. (moonvine, RoS, RoW current - and for oracle/fountain there's no hand slot so still no ability to exceed current maximum boost across all chasses). And for single boosting of N you still go to the thistle mace because its cheaper. ie, it has little effect on common needs for an N booster (doesn't change 1 boost level choice or max possible boost).

At which point the only real reason to forge it will be for the earth booster.

Keep in mind that 'drawbacks' are not something we should be actively seeking out - Earth has *1* non-unique booster without bloodstones (2 if you count the staff of the elements, which is remarkably hard to forge without earth boosters!), compared to at least 2 such boosters for every other path of magic. This is a shortcoming that should be rectified.

So arguably the ToG adds less value than the bloodstone did (both have E, +1e/trn vs. +1N), and doesn't really change the metagame situation substantially for N boosters. Sure, its different paths than bloodstone, but that's not the most important part. (People can and will trade for items, the important part is that a second *non-cursed* non-unique earth booster exist)

[Sombre]

I'm of the opinion that the best thing to do is to change the tome of gaea into an exact replica of the bloodstone (same graphic, same costs, same paths, same RL). The nature boosting part of it can make up for the loss of the gem genning.

[Psycho]

Well I thought the point was to get those E5 spells like earth attacks and earth kings. If that is the use for the booster then it needn't be cheap.

I agree with Chris here. Some nations are hit more badly then others by the lack of blood stones. The same goes for clams and fetishes. The idea should be to change those nations in some way to compensate for it, not add an item forgeable by everyone to do it.

I don't like the tome idea as it lets you get +3 nature too easily. Now everyone can do mother oak and gift of health etc.