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Artificer Class

Submitted by VanceVasser on Sat, 2023-04-15 20:55

Artificer Class

Adds an Artificer class to the game.
Artificer is a versatile class that specialize in items.
They are able to craft items and use them in ways that other classes cannot.

Beware: Although powerful later on, artificers have a weak early game, and require a good deal of item management to succeed. This class may not be for everyone.

Requires Embers of Rage DLC


Artificer Class forum discussion thread
Artificer Class on Steam's Workshop
See addon usage in the character's vault.
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Name Module Version Required Released File
Artificer Class - 1.0.4 1.7.4 2023-05-14 18:24 
tome-artificer-nacht.teaa
Artificer Class - 1.0.3 1.7.4 2023-04-23 20:30 
tome-artificer-nacht.teaa
Artificer Class - 1.0.2 1.7.4 2023-04-21 05:24 
tome-artificer-nacht.teaa
Artificer Class - 1.0.1 1.7.4 2023-04-19 01:54 
tome-artificer-nacht.teaa
Artificer Class - 1.0.0 1.7.4 2023-04-15 20:56 
tome-artificer-nacht.teaa

Thoughts

Submitted by hunter on Sun, 2023-06-25 16:08.
  • As others have said, this is a well-designed and fun class to play. Personally, I think DG should include it in the next version of the main game (though, while I see why it's classified as a rogue, it feels more like a tinker class.)
  • I understand that this point would be incredibly complicated and time-consuming to develop, but I do want to note that the class has so much potential that is limited by the fact that you really can't play it effectively as anything other than a melee fighter. So a massive percentage of the various items you can create are pretty much either useless or of limited utility to the class. No real use of mana or psi items, little use for nature or tinker items, and so on. I tried playing it as an adventurer to give me the opportunity to develop a different style of character than one devoted to nice items and poison. It was...okay. The limit to category multipliers for artifice categories made it less satisfying, and adventurers in general are messy, if fun. I also tried the dual-class add-on, though that's brutal because it raises difficulty by two categories (and I had to start with Nightmare which is raised to Madness because Normal. which would raise me to "merely" Insane is apparently bugged in that add-on right now.) The only other option I see for broadening the Artificer's possibilities is adding more locked categories addressing more areas of focus, or making Artificer its own category and creating multiple sub-categories of Artificer to focus on various types of classes (like Artificer-Rogue (the current set-up) or Artificer-Mage or Artificer-Tinker, and so on.)
  • Is there some randomness involved in dismantling fixedarts? I had a fixedart (Feathersteel in this case) that I broke down with one character that doesn't see to be amenable to breaking down with another one.
  • I was disappointed that the Short element wasn't transferable to non-staves. My dream of dual-wielding greatswords died on the vine. I mean, it was insanely sensible to create that limitation because dual-wielding greatswords is a bit much, but I was still disappointed, dammit.

Anyway, this is a great add-on and I've really enjoyed playing around with it.

RE: Thoughts

Submitted by VanceVasser on Sat, 2023-07-08 20:21.

Just to check, when you say melee, are you referring to melee specifically or just weapon combat in general (as opposed to casting)? Because most artificer talents (Charmblade, Power Strike, etc.) work with ranged weapons as well.

As for a caster-style artificer, it is possible to play one (my final full-game test was as a mindpower based caster artificer), though it is weaker early on. Some tips for playing a caster artificer in the current version:

Early on, keep your eyes peeled for artifacts that cast talents. Kor's Fall, for example, is a fantastic early find for a Magic based artificer. Mindpower based will, admittedly, have more trouble has there are fewer good active artifacts early for them.
The actives of the elemental weapon augments all scale on spellpower or mindpower, so they can serve as your basic aoe blasting once you get them.
I highly recommend unlocking Experimental Imbuing at either 10 or 20. Legacy Component alongside one point in Flexible Imbuing lets you swipe any good fixedart actives that scale on spell/mindpower and stuff them into other slots. And of course Biological Component lets you start accumulating active talents of all sorts, so getting it sooner is better than later.

That said, Magic/Willpower based artificers could probably use a boost to make their early-mid game more consistent (maybe more augments that scale well with casting stats?)

There shouldn't be any randomness to dismantling fixedarts. Just to confirm, your Legacy Component talent on the other character was at least level 2 (tier of Feathersteel Amulet), right?

Haha, sorry, short (and magewarrior's short) is restricted to staves for a technical reason. Those egos actually change the equip image of the item when they resolve, but weapons other than staves don't have the necessary images, so if short were applied to them it would result in bad things.

I'm referring to melee in

Submitted by hunter on Mon, 2023-07-10 18:26.

I'm referring to melee in general. The only real talent trees for fighting/exploring are Poisons, Artifice, and Trapping, none of which lend themselves to build for anything other than melee with a bit of sneakiness (technically Poisons helps with ranged attacks too, but winning the game using ranged attacks without any ranged talents seems unlikely to me, and I personally can't see either of the other two categories being of much use in most Eastern dungeons,) Just to be clear, I completely get that it's an inherent limitation on the character, like any other class, and doesn't affect the enjoyability. My point is more of a suggestion, since artificing can open up all sorts of builds, from mana/magic to wilder/elemental to tinker/steam by creating artifacts geared to these aspects. So, in theory, I could do a wyrmic using aspects from dismantled mindstars and anti-magic, or a cursed using darkness and hate items. There are just so many possible egos and items that just aren't worth using with a character whose only real offensive talents (besides Combat Training, obviously) involve either poison or the rogue's Artifice talents. So if, for instance, a player wanted to go a bit Celestial, there could be a subtype of Artificer that replaces the Poisons and Trapping trees with two equivalently-powered Celestial trees. So you'd have an aritificer that focuses on items that help with positive/negative energies and light/dark bonuses.

In essence, I'm praising the possibilities of your add-on. I'm not saying it doesn't work great as is. It does. I've been playing around with it for weeks now. Rather, I think it would be perfect for creating an entire meta-class category with specialized variants under it.

I am aware of how much effort that would entail, picking the exact right talent trees to synergize well without leading to unbalanced over/underpowered characters. So I'd absolutely understand that objection

As for the dismantling issue, if there's no reason for it to change from character to character, Ockham's Razor suggests I screwed it up somehow. I would have sworn I checked everything, including talent level, but I must have missed something. I can't find the character I was having problems with, so I probably deleted it. I've been playing around a lot with the class, including using an add-on for more respec flexibility than the normal game allows, so there have been plenty of easy-come, easy-go deletions, unfortunately. (Just to make sure, though -- the fact that some fixedarts can't be dismantled is deliberate, right? I just assumed so, but now that I'm thinking about the issue, I might as well make sure.)

Some comment after playing

Submitted by moyajushi on Wed, 2023-06-14 05:50.

Fortification dont block dot damage
I know it is written in the description that it doesn't. I just wonder why dot damage is so *special* . There are tons of dot damage in the late game, which are quite lethal. This means this class only have raw resistance to fight against dot throughout the game.

This addon is fantastic in its mechanism and idea. Before playing this class, I have thought it is a hard class to start but with huge late game bonus. But I was wrong, this class is very hard to play in the early game, mid game and end game.
Why? Because point investment is a disaster. You have to fully invest 10+ non battle skills to be a functional "Artificer", but these points wont give any direct boost to battle strength. The benefits of these investment can only be expected in the ultra late game. During most of the game, crafted gears are not better than battle drops.
Artificer is excellent in ego manipulation. The ego extraction mechanism is good, but without mechanism of fusion formula, ego extracting is very unreliable. Because rare egos drops *rarely*.We need some kind of formula to create rare egos from common ones.
Even for the battle side, it is still very point consuming. To start early game, you have to rely on item casting, buy item casting is quite limited in the mid game and end game. You still need to invest on weapon skills. However, if you don't find proper weapon of proper egos, the weapon investment is a waste, because this class is really poor at melee combat: long cd, poor multiplier, no aoe, no movement, no recovery. And all passive skills that enhance you need to be FULLY invested.

I have played many insane Artificers, only one past 30 lvl by far. And the only char even haven't craft any piece of armor or weapon yet.

RE: Some comment after playing

Submitted by VanceVasser on Sat, 2023-07-08 20:03.

I had it only blocking direct damage, as it made sense to me that adjustments to your armor wouldn't be able to, say, stop you from taking damage from a poison you were already afflicted with. I'd like for it to be able to block dots from area effects (i.e. Burning Wake), but there doesn't seem to be a way to differentiate those in the code from other sources of non-direct damage.

Requiring investment in multiple talents to get the class going was the intent, though not getting anything good from crafting until past level 30 doesn't sound right; other than some quick early game crafts (i.e. slapping two on-hit damage procs on a weapon), I usually started crafting a lot in the 8-15 range (after augments are unlocked). Some of the crafting talents can actually do quite a bit at level 1 (for example Flexible Imbuing can be used to transfer most activated abilities just fine at level 1, as they are not affected by the penalty). I'll do some more playtesting though and see if I can get it to be better in that level range.

For rare egos, I didn't want to make them too much more accessible than normal, as I wanted what items you find to have an impact on the decisions you make for your Artificer character, what items to spec them with, and how to play them. I might look into making it easier to influence the outcome of Fuse Items to get egos you want, although it will still take some experimentation. Right now fusing two lesser ego components has a 10% chance of giving a greater ego that shares a power source with one of its ingredients. If the two ingredients have the same affinity then the result will also have that affinity.

Items put in vault disappear

Submitted by Vash The Stampede on Mon, 2023-06-05 07:51.

I have noticed that items put into the vault from my Artificer disappear. I have not tried to put any crafted items in there, simply artifacts and gems. My other characters can put items into the vault and my artificer can withdraw them. I assume this is a bug rather than intended.

1.7.4 or 1.7.5?

Submitted by McKwack on Tue, 2023-06-06 06:44.

Are you running ToME version 1.7.4 or 1.7.5?

If it's 1.7.5, it might be related to the current bug that is affecting ToME 1.7.5 as a whole, and not necessarily related to this Artificer addon.

Just my 2 coins.

PS you can read the whole issue with disappearing vault items here: https://te4.org/blogs/darkgod/2023/05/news/tales-majeyal-175-storm-released

Edit: yep, looks like you're already running ToME 1.7.5, since some of your characters, including 2 Artificers, are saved under 1.7.5.

Yep that looks like the issue

Submitted by Vash The Stampede on Wed, 2023-06-07 02:03.

Thanks for following up on this. That does indeed look like the issue. I assumed it was an artificer issue since my other character could put items in the vault successfully, but maybe because that character was created in an older version it wasn't affected by the general 1.7.5, not sure.

I have been having a blast with the Artificer, thanks for creating such a fresh new class.

not working

Submitted by Acura on Sat, 2023-04-29 19:41.

Not working at the moment of creating an item

RE: not working

Submitted by VanceVasser on Fri, 2023-05-05 19:03.

Thanks for the report! I tested creating items, and it seems to be working for me. Could you give me some more information on what kind of item you were trying to make and what components you were using to make the item?

I'm enjoying this class very

Submitted by hunter on Wed, 2023-05-10 16:12.

I'm enjoying this class very much. While I have a few questions, I don't remember the specifics right now, so I'll get back to you on them, but I do have something to add to this comment thread, which is that Prio's Prismatic Eye caused an error when I tried to use it to craft a voratun ring. It was the first item I added, so there wasn't any conflict with any other elements. I soldiered on and tried to create the item even after that error, and the item simply didn't come into existence. Not a huge issue, considering how many other things I could create without a problem, but I figure I should give you a heads-up.

Prismatic Eye

Submitted by VanceVasser on Sun, 2023-05-14 18:17.

Whoops, I'll fix that. Thanks for the report!