This is just a collection of commit messages from DracoOmega for easy access. You can find all of these yourself here. It’s still being developed so numbers and maybe even functions are subject to change (and might already be outdated! Some things have already been tweaked!) but hopefully this gives a good baseline to understand the new direction.
Big picture overview: The Major/Minor versions of Mak’s abilities have merged so now there is just 1 Destruction and 1 Servant ability that both scale strongly with invocations. At some point your Destruction ability will gain a random enhancement flavored with one of the 4 hell branches. Marks are like a special Makhleb mutation to enhance your abilities and when you first reach 6* piety you get to choose 1 (from a random set of 3).
Most online servers already have these updates. CUE and CXC don’t have these changes quite yet but hopefully will shortly. If you’re playing offline you can find windows trunk builds on the here.
Merge Minor/Major Destruction into Unleash Destruction
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Mahkleb was the last god remaining who had a minor/major split among
abilities doing largely the same thing (and where the lesser of those
eventually becomes almost entirely obsolete as the game goes on.) It makes
some sense to merge them to create more room for other exciting toys at
higher piety levels.But even though Major Destruction had the lowest piety cost among all
abilities in the game that cost piety, Minor Destruction literally cost 0
and there can be a powerful psychological difference between ‘free’ and
‘only almost free’. Some players liked having an ability they could use
without long-term cost! But the same time, having something ‘freely
spammable for limited effect’ has some design awkwardnesses, so let’s try
leaning into the HP cost even more (which is flavorful for Makhleb, and can
counterbalance the ability being free in the short-term while still having
no strategic cost).At the same time, let’s introduce a little more chaotic diversity from run
to run by having 4 different ‘flavours’ of Unleash Destruction (themed
after each of the Hells) and granting the player a random one of these when
they first hit 4* with Makhleb (ie: the same threshold that previously
granted Major Destruction.)Unleash Destruction now costs more HP (which scales with the player’s max
HP) and no longer relies on existing unrelated zap types (which caused
periodic issues when one of those was changed, and also made it difficult
to even tell what Destruction’s average damage was). In its base form, it
selects between Fire, Cold, Electricity, and Negative Energy (all dealing
the same damage) and is non-piercing. All 4 of the upgrade mutations give
it piercing, replace one of these elements with a different thematically-
appropriate one, and add an additional property to a base element. In full:Gehenna Destruction:
-Fire (which inflicts rF-), Lava, Lightning, Negative EnergyCocytus Destruction:
-Cold (which inflicts Frozen), Ice, Lightning, Negative EnergyTartarus Destruction:
-Fire, Cold, Negative Energy (with bonus damage!), DevastationDis Destruction:
-Fire, Cold, Lightning, Acid, Metal Splinters
(It gets a 5th, since the Negative Energy that gets swapped out is
the most frequently useless of the base types and Acid is arguably best)Hopefully this revamped Destruction feels suitably relevant both early and
later, a least a little distinct from other blasty invocations such as
Qazlal’s by being piety-free but self-destructive, and gives a touch more
variety between runs.(The player character now also produces blood around themselves whenever
they use this or any other Makhleb invocation, as another touch of
flavour.)
Merge Lesser/Greater Servant abilities into Infernal Servant
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As part of the Mahkleb revamp, both demon summoning abilities are being
merged together. Infernal Servant is still obtained at 3*, is priced
between the two previous abilities, and the quality of demon summoned is
now strongly influenced by invocations (and sorted roughly in order of
strength, so that it requires more invocations to get executioners and
balrugs than other 2s, for instance.)The variety of demons it can summon is expanded to include red devils, ice
devils, rust devils, soul eaters, sun demons, and sixfirhy, while losing
neqoxecs (which were very weak as allies and unpleasant as enemies).Hostile demons are no longer produced by failing to use this ability, but
instead there is a flat 1-in-6 chance that any use of it will produce a
durably summoned hostile demon alongside your friendly one - along with a
small increase in quality of the friendly demon summoned at those times.
The hope is this preserves some of the ‘deal with a devil’ flavor of the
ability while making it less correct to ‘use at the start of battle and
then ?tele if you get a bad roll’.
Add code framework for gaining Infernal Marks
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This adds the basic backend for gaining Makhleb’s new capstone gift - one
of a selection of Makhleb-specific mutations that grant powerful passive
effects and/or change how your Makhleb invocations work.At 6*, the player will be offered a choice of 3 different Marks (out of
however many exist - currently planned at 9). Selecting one of these will
permanently brand the player with it (injuring them greatly in the
process…) and give them its effect for as long as they worship Makhleb.
The mark will persist as a mutation, even if they abandon the god, but will
not actually function unless they start worshipping them again (this
prevents any possibility of abandoning to reroll your mutation
possibilities, and it’s also good flavour that you have to live with the
consequences of your actions here.) Forms which normally suppress mutations
will not suppress these.(They also cause silver vulnerability - despite otherwise being
perma-mutations, they are clearly demonic in origin and ought to count.)None of the marks included in this commit do anything yet; that will come
in future commits.
Note: Of course the marks have since been added and are functional.
Marks
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Makhleb capstone: Mark of the Tyrant
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This mark improves the player’s Infernal Servant ability, especially at
very high invocations.Summoned servants have duration 6 instead of 4, and at 19+ invocations it
starts to become possible to summon the other tier 1 demons (with hell
sentinels needing ~26) at an additional piety cost. Whenever the player
kills an enemy on their own, a random active servant will be buffed with
one of: haste, might, brilliance (if they have spells), or regeneration.
Mahkleb capstone: Mark of Carnage
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This mark changes how the player’s Infernal Servant operates. Instead of
summoning a demon near the player, it instead summons that demon adjacent
to a random visible enemy and causes a 5x5 burst of destruction where it
appears. This burst uses only the ‘characteristic’ types of the player’s
Unleash Destruction ability (ie: fire/lava if you have Geh, acid/metal
splinters if you have Dis) and cannot inflict damage on either the player
or your other allies.
Makhleb capstone: Mark of the Legion
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This mark replaces the player’s Infernal Servant ability with Infernal
Legion, which gives a status that summons many short-lived demons near the
player over time instead. These demons are weaker (equivalent to using
Infernal Servant with approximately 1/2 of your Invocations skill), and
the ability itself is much more expensive. They will only be summoned while
at least one enemy is nearby.This mark also allows you to fire Destruction through your allies without
harming them (since they now have a much greater tendency to get in the way
at all times), which has some additional synergy with other player builds
as well.
Mahkleb capstone: Mark of Annihilation
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Replaces Infernal Servant with Globe of Annihilation, which launches an
iood-like projectile that explodes in a large blast of the player’s
signature destruction. It moves at speed 15 (so about half the speed of an
iood), and the size of the explosion increases with the distance travelled:
no explosion (and only 1/2 damage) at point-blank range, radius 1 at 1 tile
travelled, 2 at 2-3 tiles travelled, and finally 3 at 4+ tiles travelled.Part of the logic of this replacing servant is that while this is a
destruction-flavored ability, I didn’t want it to completely eat up having
a ‘free’ conjurations button of flexible elements with something much more
expensive and less flexible. And it wouldn’t play very well with servants
anyway, so the loss might not be that meaningful. (I considered it simply
being a 3rd ability, but at the moment am saving that for something a bit
flashier; I could be convinced otherwise, with testing.)
Makhleb capstone: Mark of Haemoclasm
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This mark gives a passive 10% chance whenever the player kills a monster
themselves for it to explode in a violent rain of gore, damaging enemies in
a 3x3 area. The damage the explosion does is proportional to the max hp of
the thing killed (and cannot harm the player or their allies). If an enemy
dies to this explosion, they instead have a 100% chance to explode,
allowing for occasional dramatic chain explosions (especially if the player
has been using AoE damage sources up to this point, which likely gives it
additional synergy with axes and conjurations).
Makhleb capstone: Mark of the Celebrant
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Whenever a player with this mark is reduced to 50% or less HP, they
unleash a flurry of blood arrows aimed randomly at nearby enemies (at least
one per enemy, though if there are fewer than 8, it may shoot at the same
enemy up to twice, with the remaining shots scattered randomly).Rather than a time-based cooldown, the passive recharges immediately when
the player returns to full HP again - which in some situations might even
happen due to Makhleb’s healing in a protracted battle. To help this
slightly, kills made with these blood arrows will always trigger Makhleb’s
healing passive.Given that it is effectively ‘easier’ to trigger and recharge with less max
HP, and provides an immediately response to help stabilize after spike
damage, it is expected this will be relatively more appealing to lower HP
/ EV-based characters than Marks which rely on paying flat HP instead.
Mahkleb capstone: Mark of Execution
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Allows a fragment of an executioner to rest dormant inside oneself.
Whenever you kill an XP-granting enemy in melee, there is a 1-in-8 chance
for it to awaken and manifest their iconic whirl of blades around the
player. For the duration, the player gains rampaging and a very good aux
attack (whose base damage scales with XL) which also triggers upon the
player dodging (like minotaur retaliatory headbutts).The duration of this status effect is very brief, but it does not expire
for actions that the player spent attacking (allowing one to keep it up
indefinitely as long as they keep swinging).
Mahkleb capstone: Mark of Atrocity
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This Mark increases both the power and cost of the player’s Unleash
Destruction ability each time it is used consecutively (ie: without doing
anything else inbetween). Upon using it a 4th time, it will also unleash
4 additional empowered bolts of destruction at random distant targets and
reset this buff.Some of the additional cost is in flat HP, making this slightly better in
relative terms on high HP species.
Makhleb capstone: Mark of the Fanatic
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The most flashy and complex mark by far, this grants the player the
Vessel of Slaughter ability - a high piety-cost ability that transforms
them into a demonic avatar of Makhleb and unleashes a large blast of
damnation around themselves as they do so.While in this form, the player has demonic resistances (including torment
immunity), will invulnerability, takes 1/3rd less damage from all sources,
recieves doubled healing from kills, and has a bonus to all outgoing damage
proportional to how low health they were when they activated the ability
(with the expected healing from damnation kills encouraging the player to
‘push their luck’ a little).But in exchange, once the transformation wears off, the player will be
dragged into the Crucible of Flesh and made to suffer and slay in payment.The Crucible is a medium-size portal arena that continually spawns waves of
hostile demons (scaled to the player’s level and also how many runes they
have collected beyond 3) and paralyzed mortal victims. The player must earn
their exit by finding and slaughtering enough of these victims (killing
demons also counts for half as much, but the faster the player can manage
it by taking out ‘helpless’ targets, the less bad things will be for them.)
Killing a mortal victim will immediately spawn another somewhere else on
the map, while demons instead arrive at semi-regular intervals (up to a
cap).Kills in the Crucible grant no xp or items, but still count for Makhleb’s
heal-on-kills passive, to help allow the player to sustain themselves
(since resting will often be difficult here). There are also a small number
of single-use teleport traps scattered around which the player can use for
short-term escapes.In some ways, the gameplay of the Crucible is reminiscent of being
banished, but should still be sufficient different as to be distinct - the
map is pre-revealed and stable, it has walls instead of being endless, the
monster set is more controlled, ?teleport works the same as usual, etc.A fundamental flavor aspect of Mahkleb’s Marks is about accepting hellish
bargains at the cost of oneself, and I felt like at least one of them
should lean as hard as possible into classical ‘deal with the devil’
flavour: tremendous power at a cost one may come to regret later. And
Vessel of Slaughter’s power is undeniable, and its cost unique. I hope
people find it fun! (I am sure various numerical knobs will need tweaking,
since this is a complex double-edged effect and it should both feel worth
it AND dangerous).(I also plan to replace Makhleb wrath with use of the Crucible so that we
can fully eliminate all the unsatisfying direct-damage wrath effects that
tend to either do nothing or kill the player with little counterplay).Massive credit to regret-index for designing the portal vault (with heavy
subvaulting randomization), as well as the Crucible wall tiles and tiles
for slaughter form. Couldn’t have done this without her.