what is the reasoning behind beguile costing 3 when domination is 5 and has the same chance to work and stealing power from merchants with no follower to be gained?

Originally posted by Etherios:

what is the reasoning behind beguile costing 3 when domination is 5 and has the same chance to work and stealing power from merchants with no follower to be gained?

There's a couple reasons. Beguiling is accessible from cooking, which (similar to Psychometry) massively reduces its value as a level 1 selection. This is especially true since it's main use is to water ritual hostile creatures. When you subtract that value and just leave the ability to gain permanent followers, it isn't worth 5 points.

Also, Domination is simply way more useful in more situations than just merchant shenanigans. Domination can let you permanently swap with powerful creatures. In dangerous areas, you can lure 1 hostile out, Dominate it, and then send it back in to kill enemies at no risk to yourself. If you do gather followers via ritual, proselytize, or beguiling, Domination lets you allocate mutation points and skill points on level up. This is an absolutely massive boost to any follower playstyle.

So Domination can be used to explore or fight at no risk to yourself, can be used to permanently swap bodies, can be used to massively increase the power of your followers, and can even be used to "instant kill" enemies by taking control of them and making them kill themselves.

Take away the water ritual benefit you gain from cooking, and Beguiling is just a second proselytize. Even if you ignored cooking, you can attack hostiles with love injectors to get the same effect. I can't justify even a 4 point cost, so it goes down to 3.

very fair. thank you!

Originally posted by Etherios:

very fair. thank you!

No problem. If you have any balance questions compared to the base game, AFFINE's website is a great reference. I don't agree with everything on there, but it's the best rating system I've seen of all the tier lists and discussions I researched before making this mod:

https://www.qudzoo.com/advice/mutations

Of course I'm happy to answer any questions as well. :)

Hi! Greatly enjoying the mod and think you've done a wonderful job. What I'd like to ask though is if the AI can use the greater range on burgeoning? I had one esper hunter (dense jungle so I could barely see them and I'm not actually sure how far away they were for most of the fight) with high enough willpower to spam burgeoning and the fight was pure torture. I suspect that the AI being able to use it at long range contributed rather heavily to the annoyance but I could be wrong.

Also the horns specifically might not have needed the point reduction, I enjoyed the STR melee builds and I feel a little guilty using the mod since I'd be picking them anyways but now I get an extra free point.

Originally posted by Kakyoin:

Hi! Greatly enjoying the mod and think you've done a wonderful job. What I'd like to ask though is if the AI can use the greater range on burgeoning? I had one esper hunter (dense jungle so I could barely see them and I'm not actually sure how far away they were for most of the fight) with high enough willpower to spam burgeoning and the fight was pure torture. I suspect that the AI being able to use it at long range contributed rather heavily to the annoyance but I could be wrong.

Also the horns specifically might not have needed the point reduction, I enjoyed the STR melee builds and I feel a little guilty using the mod since I'd be picking them anyways but now I get an extra free point.

Thanks for the feedback! I definitely appreciate hearing your experience with it.

The esper hunters being able to use the buffed mutations is by design. This is a double edged sword, as espers are much stronger to play now, but also face even stronger opposition once glimmer gets high. It would require extensive patching to fix this, but at least for me it makes things more interesting. That said, I'll do some more testing with the esper hunters though to see if it is too much of an issue. As far as I know, they shouldn't immediately aggro you from across the entire map if they can't see you. So either I'm mistaken, or they had clairvoyance or sense psychic. I'll do some more testing and reduce the range if necessary.

As for Horns, I wouldn't feel bad about it. This mod is balanced around the most powerful mutations which warp the meta so to speak. That would be things like Carapace, Precognition, Multiple Legs, Wings, Corrosive Gas, Domination, etc. Horns is near the high end in terms of power, but it isn't as strong as Corrosive Gas or Carapace. As such, it just makes sense to drop it down to 3. Keep in mind over the course of the game you're required to invest heavily into it, so you're still spending a total of 12 points to upgrade it. It's definitely a buff to your playstyle, but that is a good thing because your playstyle was(from a cost perspective), less powerful than the really OP mutations I listed. But because it was close, that's why Horns only received a minor buff instead of a complete overhaul.

Either way, I'll definitely keep that in mind as I keep tweaking things. I'm going to be doing some small balance adjustments as I develop the mod, so if anything stands out I'll bring it into line.

Originally posted by Kakyoin:

Hi! Greatly enjoying the mod and think you've done a wonderful job. What I'd like to ask though is if the AI can use the greater range on burgeoning? I had one esper hunter (dense jungle so I could barely see them and I'm not actually sure how far away they were for most of the fight) with high enough willpower to spam burgeoning and the fight was pure torture. I suspect that the AI being able to use it at long range contributed rather heavily to the annoyance but I could be wrong.

Also the horns specifically might not have needed the point reduction, I enjoyed the STR melee builds and I feel a little guilty using the mod since I'd be picking them anyways but now I get an extra free point.

Okay turns out I was wrong. I thought it was only when your glimmer was high that they would see you with clairvoyance, but I verified that the AI is just inconsistent. They always see you pretty much, but some creature types due to their base AI don't attack right away. I'll probably tone Burgeoning's range down, while still keeping it larger than most other offensive mutations.

Would it be possible to have things like beaks and horns spawn on both heads when you have the two headed mutation? Or would that be too strong even if it is possible.

Originally posted by Croctus:

Would it be possible to have things like beaks and horns spawn on both heads when you have the two headed mutation? Or would that be too strong even if it is possible.

I think it would be way too strong honestly. Horns are by far the best natural weapon in the game, so getting 2 of them for the price of one is nuts. Beaks aren't much value in terms of combat, but getting +2 ego for 1 mutation point is pretty insane too, especially since Two headed is already such a fantastic esper mutation.

Finished a run with a character using quills.

To preface, a majority of the damage dealt during this run was via quills, and I chose not to learn weapon skills or use weapons beyond typical ranged equipment early on like the issachar rifle and assault carbine.

By focusing most of my attributes into toughness and increasing my health as much as possible, I was able to deal about 400-500 to most lightly armored enemies per tile hit by quill by the end of the game. Highly armored enemies took about 100~ but this is still a marked improvement over base quills doing nothing.

The real meat of this run shined in how strong reflected damage became. With proper cooking of reflected damage and healing effects, coupled with purposely keeping my armor value low, I was able to use temporal fugue to continuously shatter enemies and still live through an immense health pool, regardless of if they triggered reflected damage or not.

It was a fun run that built on the identity I wanted quills to feel more like in vanilla: Being an explosive pinecone with a close range blast that punished enemies for evenly surrounding you.

Originally posted by Aggressive Goat:

Finished a run with a character using quills.

To preface, a majority of the damage dealt during this run was via quills, and I chose not to learn weapon skills or use weapons beyond typical ranged equipment early on like the issachar rifle and assault carbine.

By focusing most of my attributes into toughness and increasing my health as much as possible, I was able to deal about 400-500 to most lightly armored enemies per tile hit by quill by the end of the game. Highly armored enemies took about 100~ but this is still a marked improvement over base quills doing nothing.

The real meat of this run shined in how strong reflected damage became. With proper cooking of reflected damage and healing effects, coupled with purposely keeping my armor value low, I was able to use temporal fugue to continuously shatter enemies and still live through an immense health pool, regardless of if they triggered reflected damage or not.

It was a fun run that built on the identity I wanted quills to feel more like in vanilla: Being an explosive pinecone with a close range blast that punished enemies for evenly surrounding you.

That is EXACTLY what I wanted out of quills. I guess my only question was did you feel it was too strong compared to other top tier builds, or was it comparable?