ToME Wiki
John Gilmore
Email: <jgilmore@glycou.com>
I'm the guy who wrote the original (and very buggy) alchemy patch for tome 2. Most of the comments (and descriptions) are still mine. Alchemy should obviously be weakened a bit. I'm hoping that I do a better job with the rewrite of necromancy that I've been meaning to get around to.
My current Necromancy patch (for tome 3) is stored at JohnGilmore/NecromancyPatch
I'm going to nerf that a bit, and expand it a bit. I really like some of the "must use the blood of X" ideas that have been tossed around a bit. See IdeaArchive/Other/Expanding Alchemy
I also plan to reimplement alchemy (or at least parts of it) under tome3. Artifact creation I'm currently planning to make something that is available only after you get killed, and available to all classes without a skill check of any sort. So that the artifacts you created would only be available to the next character you played.
Bug reports submitted by me
Patches and Code
I savescum. /go is how.
I now have two patches posted on the wiki. I guess I ought to point at them.
BugReport587 Fix an inventory list in option window bug under 3.0
IdeaArchive/Interface/Items I'm standing on window Written long ago, this patch is against some versio of 2.x and may or may not be usable in it's current form. Creates an option window which will not only display a list of items you're standing on, but also displays items on grids you 'l'ook at, and items carried by monsters you 'l'ook at. Quite useful really, I just got tired of patching again every time a new version of tome came out. I may have mentioned this on the mailing list at the time, but I honestly don't remember.
These are older patches for 2.x that I've decided to put online, just because I can.
/store names I don't remember what this patch does. Something to do with store names, though.
/show levels in spellbooks When you don't have even a single level in the school required, a spellbook shows 'n/a'. This patch changes it to show the level of skill you'd need. I later learned that it was easier to look it up in the help system, so this patch is kinda pointless.
/improved monster list This vastly improves the list of visible monsters. It shows the monsters ascii picture, and seperates friendly/pet/neutral/hostile monsters, so it's easy to see how the summoning battle between your brood and those GWoPs is going. It was very useful when I was playing a necromancer or summoner. NOTE: One the it DOESN'T do is display the monster's correct ascii picture when it's an ego monster (it's displayed with the old color and character) but it's still WAY better. If you're playing any sort of summoner, you'll love this patch.
/old rebalanced alchemy After realizing how very munchkinish alchemy was, this was my first attempt to bring balance to it. I consider it a failure. The main problem is that it makes magic essence required for making ego items, and them makes magic essence almost always destroyed when you extract it. This made magic essence so rare that the best source was to find it laying around in the dungeon. To much balance, if you ask me.
/Summon in Color The most important attack that many monsters have is to summon other monsters. I play with automatically clear "-more-" prompts, and I found that in huge battles it would sometimes be difficult to figure out who was summoning what. So I changed the code so that summon messages are always printed in yellow. This patch may work better after applying the "better necromancy" patch below.
/Better Necromancy There are four problems with 2.x necromancy.
- Horrify is pitiful, doing zero damage to many monsters. Changed to always to at least some damage, and to show how much damage.
- Horrify is now too powerful. Should be scaled down a bit. Oh, well.
- Raising a chunk of meat as a full zombie is silly.
- A skill level of 5 in necromancy gets you the ability to raise any type of undead. Changed to require higher skill levels to raise more powerful types (adding even more powerful and faster moving types in the process!)
- Raising a monster from a corpse of something you've already killed shouldn't generate more items. I didn't address this one.
- Horrify is pitiful, doing zero damage to many monsters. Changed to always to at least some damage, and to show how much damage.
Chatter
Actius: There's several ways a character can die and keep playing. There's a potion that allows this (once), an ability that allows this (with limitations), and I think there's a god that does this (sometimes). Personally, I'm always starting new player files and so I don't much see the already present cumulative effects where one character has effects on the next (busts of kings, monster recall, and a certain level), but I'd worry about adding another cumulative effect to a game that essentially forces all characters to follow the same path.
JohnGilmore: I meant permanant death, it would only happen when you can see your tombstone. And though saving it in the save file would be easiest, I agree - I don't see much monster memory and such from previous lives. So I'd definately want to put it into another file somewhere. I'd say "Obviously, this belongs in the ~/.tome directory!" except that leaves multiplayer interaction out, not that anybody plays TOME on a multiuser system these days. I don't have any current plans to store it anywhere, beyond that it doesn't belong in the savefile. There's probably isn't a "Best" place, but there are some limitations on where it can be stored which are imposed by the physfs file system, the current UID's access levels, etc.