Dissapointing firearms?

[Dematto]

Craftable Ammo might be sweet.
Rather than add it to the already-cluttered Alchemy window, though, perhaps there should be a new item. A Tinkerer's Toolkit. Use in-hand to produce pellets. Maybe the recipes available are based on the Firearms skill.

1: Grind a stone for 10 pellets.
1: Carve a torch into a handful of wooden pellets. (Perhaps a slight damage penalty?)
3: Apply herbs to pellets for elemental effect?
4:

SpoilerShow

Turn Pellets into Cannonballs, and Cannonballs into Pellets.

The reason I include the second, torch-based recipe is that JUST chunking stones might not be enough to really remedy pellet-consumption rates and issues.
But if I could turn my 20 rocks and 20 torches in to 400 spare ammo. . . well, that might be just dandy.

[Luj1]

Mb grind stones with Miner's pick to get a number of pellets

[Sarumorpheus]

I gave the craftable ammo idea some thought yesterday and came up with this: (Please note I did not read the entire topic)

- What if at level 4 firearms skill you gain a trait called "Pellet Craftsman", with a description like, "You are resourceful and able to craft ammunition from whatever the land provides. Every day at midnight, you will automatically create 5-15 pellets."

The ammo would appear in your inventory automatically every midnight, and whenever so happened, a sentence on the bottom screen would pop up, "Eric Shadowspring has crafted 12 pellets." combined with a relevant clipsound. No ingredients would be needed because the character is using "whatever the land provides".


I had initially considered breaking down rocks to grant pellets, but they are often used for puzzles and such (though you may use other objects, but still), so I thought this idea could work well. Basically, I'd like to see firearms separate further from alchemy.

[Dr.Disaster]

Every day at midnight, you will automatically create 5-15 pellets.

A plain and simple "No" to this or the next request would be automatic potion/bomb creation.

[Sarumorpheus]

Every day at midnight, you will automatically create 5-15 pellets.

A plain and simple "No" to this or the next request would be automatic potion/bomb creation.

Lol. That's not what I'm implying either. Those already work with the current crafting system, of plants for potions, for instance.

Question is, what could be used as an ingredient for pellet crafting then?

[Dr.Disaster]

Question is, what could be used as an ingredient for pellet crafting then?

During Beta i suggested Blooddrop Cap, Blackmoss and Rock. Yet the LoG2 mortar would need a little update to allow that i.e. by letting the player drag something into the mortar he can't pre-select.

[ernirulez]

So far my firearm experience has been pretty disappointing: All toons level three so far and I can never find enough ammo and the damage is always below my front-line Minotaur Fighter using Heavy Weapons and Human Wizard in the back line using Fire magic no matter how many points I sink into Firearms. To add injury to insult, in addition to having a chance to miss with Accuracy, the chance of misfire just makes this skill worthless as it currently stands at low level. Not sure about higher levels yet, but I want to point out that the damage definitely does not scale proportionally to the rest of the weapons/skills in the game;

Take, for example, a Minotaur with maxed Strength and Heavy Weapons (or thrown weapons) using any weapon, an Insect spell-caster maximizing Wisdom and Fire spells, a Lizard Rogue maxing Dexterity and using bows... from my testing so far, any of these examples beats out Firearms damage at an equivalent skill and attribute level. The skill simply has not been balanced as well as the other skills most likely because the other skills got extensive play-testing in LoG1

So, to summarize, Firearm shortcomings are;

1. Damage significantly lower and not proportional to all other modes of damage at the same level
2. No way to replenish spent ammo, and no other means of getting ammo
3. Chance to misfire, in addition to chance of missing due to Accuracy

I've posted ideas like this and the devs usually overlook balance issues for whatever reason, however if I may offer my suggestion;

1. Tie damage to Accuracy - the better the aim, the more damage can be caused
2. Allow ammo boxes to automatically replenish over time, like magic regeneration, where putting points into firearms increase the regeneration%
3. Keep the chance to misfire, but to offset this, increase the chance of critical hit

you forgot one that makes it even worse!

4. 5% chance to backfire, causing minor damage to entire party! actually killed two of my chars in a hard fight with a backfire once.

and:

5. very limited range until skill increased.

yeah... I'd say if you want to play with guns, max it ASAP. agreed that this skill needs some serious balancing. either leave the negatives in, but make it about 25% more damaging flat out, or remove/provide easier ways to mitigate the negatives.

if I were to start over, I'd definitely pick a bow rogue over gun alchemist, even with the bonuses to alchemist for growth, etc. The misfire reduction chance either does not work at all, or guns must normally misfire 75% of the time, because at level 3 firearms, my alchemist was still misfiring about 20% of the time (and still backfired at 5% even at level 4).

that leaves really the only advantage to alchemist as growth, and the only real advantage to that is getting rare plants to grow like crystal flowers. meanwhile, your bow rogue would more than make up for any bonuses to stats from crystal potions with a lot more reliable damage output.

Adding a bit more against getting firearms... I have my ratling alchemist, which I think it´s a super race (mutation trait makes it maybe the best), and I find the class alchemist just great and necessary in the game. Having said that and after getting to level 13, I would say that firearms is a no-choice skill. You almost always run out of pellets. The damage is very low compared on what you could have got with other skill. Just to make it clear, my alchemyst has 5 points in firearms and I prefer using a single dagger for combats. I have a good amount dexterity and dual-wield (light weapons) would have been much better option (I already have a missile weapons rogue).
So if firearms does not change in the future, I would recommend not taking it at all. It is more like a weakness rather than an advantage.

[Luj1]

What if at level 4 firearms skill you gain a trait called "Pellet Craftsman", ....


... Every day at midnight, you will automatically create 5-15 pellets.... [/i]"

I like this idea about auto-crafting, but mb the trait should be within Alchemy skill (more sense)

[Ixnatifual]

Should having alchemy be a prerequisite for having a useful firearms character?

[Dematto]

Ya know, I don't completely mind the autocraft idea.
And it wouldn't even necessarily have to be at "midnight". You could have it occur every x steps, or spawn them during rests.

I'm not entirely sure how this would lead to Dr.Disaster's fear of automatically making potions/bombs (which....we already do, with alchemists, don't we?) I think the bigger problem with autocraft would be that your character

SpoilerShow

makes multiple kinds of pistol ammo. Ruining the cannon surprise.

Edit: I suppose it could be like alchemy and clone from your inventory.