>Re: Combat. Functionally, the CFB zombie is (and always has been) intended to be your go-to combat companion. Something that's literally hacked to pieces and then stitched together just isn't going to be as sturdy as something that was just killed and raised intact. That said, I'm open to changes at this point.

I agree, CFB/QE should always be our wrecking ball options for animations. That said I wouldnt mind combat risen as long as it came at the cost of utility. Perhaps add a Defensive proficiency scroll that set the Risen's defenses at 60-70% of the users TM skill? It could work favor human like risen. Then an Offensive Proficiency scroll for offense, 60-70% of users TM skill and it favors inhuman risen. Either of these should increase the risen's sleep time and reduce activity time. Under a model like this, close to half? of the risen's potential abilities are taken up by these scrolls. May still be hard to balance since given enough time a Necromancer can have near infinite risen. Maybe having a combat risen out blocks CFB/QE, or we require a cyclic spell for any more combat skill to be active...


Elusive
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

>> I'd personally be cool with zombies being our "Warrior", Risen being our "Mage", and mudmen being an odd hybrid that does both slightly worse than the former and also lacks fine control.

This, but I'd replace "Mage" with... I don't know, servant?

So long as Risen can perform the non-combat utility of going into town, selling stuff, depositing, getting work orders, etc., the rest is just gravy. I had hoped we would be able to control them / speak through them like WM familiars but my brief testing didn't indicate this was possible - maybe these controls just aren't available yet.

If they DO provide combat utility (and for monstrous ones they probably should or what's the point?) then they obviously need some survivability. Though I'm hoping this utility comes as both buffs to us and not just debuffs to critters/rooms.

By the way, I thought the assembly process was fun and novel. I'm a little concerned about inventory management and decay timers on the pieces though. Anything that forces me to do extra inventory management and parser-jitsu isn't fun, especially with a countdown timer. I think we'll need bodypart stackers/sorters and the ability to pull parts by type / source ASAP.

>>I had hoped we would be able to control them / speak through them like WM familiars but my brief testing didn't indicate this was possible - maybe these controls just aren't available yet.

Intended as custom commands, rather than default handling. I realize that may be a bit disappointing, but bear in mind it'd be kind of unfair on the other side of the fence if they were WM familiars + a ton of other stuff too without any kind of sacrifice.

>>If they DO provide combat utility (and for monstrous ones they probably should or what's the point?) then they obviously need some survivability. Though I'm hoping this utility comes as both buffs to us and not just debuffs to critters/rooms.

I have a Risen-specific barrier in mind, and I'm not against tweaking up their default survivability a bit, as long as people realize and accept that they are not going to become combat-competent offensively.

>>I'm a little concerned about inventory management and decay timers on the pieces though.

We're currently working on a "corpse runner" custom command for Risen. Give your Risen your key and the part, and they go put it in your locker for you.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>Intended as custom commands, rather than default handling. I realize that may be a bit disappointing, but bear in mind it'd be kind of unfair on the other side of the fence if they were WM familiars + a ton of other stuff too without any kind of sacrifice.

Given our experiences with a particular risen the last few years (where that Risen was capable of talking of their own accord, capable of being told by their master to say something on the master's behalf, or just overtaken by the master to channel the master's own voice), how exactly will our "talking" (or even general actions?) function in an IC/lore sense?

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>I have a Risen-specific barrier in mind, and I'm not against tweaking up their default survivability a bit, as long as people realize and accept that they are not going to become combat-competent offensively.

Unless there's a way to make them stronger that i'm missing they will need their default survivability upped a bit to last 'at level'.

At 150th circle, 900ish effective than, 700 FA i'm producing risen who's defenses appraise as beneath my notice/you would tare to shreds/etc vs my 250 brawling.

Risen are going to need to be able to survive in combat if they are going to be of any use besides being a glorified shadow servant. I would hate to see one of the necro's ultimate ability be a singing movable vault. And this cool down timer is also a little frustrating. It was implied that this was a permanent/persistent pet - somewhere between a mudman and a zombie in strength. We can move the goalposts and make its attack power meaningless, but it still would need to survive for it's debuffs to work.

>>I'm guessing there will be limited scroll-slots on a Risen? That's cool. I actually kinda like this better than having them all do the same stuff "out of the freezer". Just so long as it's possible.

I'm hoping the limitation is less slot-based and more capability-based.

In other words, a headless series of limbs might be great at learning immobilization effects, but not really apt for speaking through. A "normal" looking humanoid would be good to transport things, unlike something more monstrous. So on.

I'd rather swap in/out the type of risen being used based on the functionality I want it to have than replace Normal Risen A with Normal Risen B because A ran out of scroll slots so B is the guy who can do a silly dance.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>Stuff about how various GMNPC Risen have acted or been able to function in the past, and questioning if the Risen players make being (or not being) like those GM-run Risen is a retcon or not:

Nothing currently being developed for PC-created Risen would be a retcon of the IC understanding of Risen as they've been portrayed in game so far.

Keeping in mind that the particular Risen that PCs have encountered are all in the Very Special Risen category for one reason or another, I wouldn't be banking on any particular thing/ability/talking style/power set/way of functioning of those GMNPCs to necessarily show up the same in the Risen that players can make. These GMNPC Risen have all been repeatedly stated to be abnormal as far as Risen go, with Lyras' Risen generals being at least semi-autonomous and retaining pieces of their living personalities, a certain crafty someone being created how he is in part due to the use of a powerful necromantic artifact, another certain someone also being created with help from that same artifact, and most of the rest being made by Book -- the single most skilled creator of Risen out of all known Necromancers to date.

That said, some of the things GM-run Risen characters have been shown to do (or at least some abilities thematically similar to them) are almost certainly going to show up, if not at release, then as we expand upon Risen ability options.


>>Given our experiences with a particular risen the last few years (where that Risen was capable of talking of their own accord, capable of being told by their master to say something on the master's behalf, or just overtaken by the master to channel the master's own voice), how exactly will our "talking" (or even general actions?) function in an IC/lore sense?

We on Team Necro haven't had the nuts and bolts design chat on the IC lore behind how Risen talk on the GM-end as of yet, but that'll be hashed out as the ability is written up.

I personally lean towards leaving it somewhat open-ended in the IC sense so that each player could easily play it out for their own Risen in any combo of the three styles mentioned in the above quote, as I see them as all perfectly valid options. I'm not the only GM making these decisions though, so it'll depend on the team consensus as development continues.


-Persida

I'm as excited about the lore aspect as I am the actual game mechanic itself, so looking forward to seeing how it pans out.

(I also look forward to the next time a certain Risen shows up and I can make it jealous of our obvious long-distance friendship by having my own multi-limbed weirdo in tow.)

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

If the statement that risen will get 'familiar' style commands via special input is accurate, and they had to have this limited access so as to not ruin familiars, does that mean familiars will be redressed at some point to have more broad functions as well?

What governs them going crazy and killing you when you wake them up? Is it just RNG or something we can control to some extent?

>>I have to admit, between the timers and now the kill chance on activation, I am worried Risen are going to be relegated to an RP tool. The abilities that we can gain would have to be very good to off-put these negatives, in my mind.

I'm having some of the same thoughts. The current timers are probably workable, once you've made a handful of risen to swap between, but we'll need to know more of what they can do and how they'll do it to really say.

The random chance of killing you part...I like in theory and I laughed pretty hard at the messaging the first time it happened BUT i'm worried people are going to be really put off by losing the fetish, and therefore the risen, on top of taking a RNG death. Before cost adjustments these were running 50+ plat per to make and/or butchery time, which will be worse on live once we can only take one part from each corpse.

>>kill on activation
Why are these weak risen able to kill a necrolord? Either they are badass and can fight with things at our level, or they can't.

Yeah, the notion of Risen being able to rebel and kill you AND destroy your ability to command them, as a function of RNG *each time you want to use them* is virtually a deal breaker.

Philosophers have historically worked with Risen, especially their leader. I will admit some confusion as to why if the Risen are so prone to demonic possession.

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"If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself." ~ Martin Heidegger

Agreed, just voicing the concern regarding the current configuration of dials and switches. I'm confident that once the bugs are ironed out that the release will require some additional tuning, and that we'll end up with something both cool and functional.

Can kill you on activation? Described as very squishy compared to the necro who creates them? Billed forever as a necromancers "permanent" pet? Except not really because they need to rest (so different then zombies? basically spell fades, time to recast).

This sounds like a really REALLY cool system that I will spend zero time with because there isn't any reason to care about it if you mainly hunt (most people?).

I am hoping I will be eating humble pie with my foot in my mouth and that in the end there will be viable combat Risen. (even if its important buffs/debuffs rather then straight dps).

I'll throw in an apology for any rudeness I've expressed. As a whole, I think we're all pretty thrilled by this, and were thrilled that test was opened to us so we could contribute to identifying kinks.

Love the new addition of the possible descriptors to risen! Thanks for putting in these cycles on this project - we appreciate it!

Hello.

Finally got into test and well tested our new play thing. I was able to create one risen without too much trouble. I misread the sign and had some issues with the stitching. That was my fault it was clear upon reflection. So just the fact that risen is as complex as it is and I was able to more or less walk in. Learn the skills needed, grab the pieces I needed and then bring something to life was very exciting to me. I honestly expected more issues with not understanding or being able to figure out the syntax or where to do things. I did have a little push from some friends on where to look for the lab but still I was very excited with what I got done.

Another thing and I am sure it was done on purpose but thank you for letting us cast spells in the area where we are making the thing. I forgot to have the spells up that would assist in the creation process. So after I brought it to life I decided to test to see if we could cast spells.

Looking forward to doing a little more testing but for now am impressed with the ease of the creation system considering how complex it really is.