(DRAFT) Skills: Green Thumb & Verdant Sling ideas

[MrFrank]

I really like the idea of Green Thumb, the new skill for Lightspeaker which allows them to grow stuff. However Verdant Sling seems to have been overlooked and it doesn't have any outstanding pluses besides a ludicrously large ammo count. So I'm thinking about different suggestions to improve these skills, introduce more synergy between them or even make one a child skill of the other. I was initially going to post a whole bunch of suggestions but I'd like to first ask for some feedback here and maybe then only post the good ones.

Sugg 1

• If Verdant Sling is purchased, then Green Thumb allows planting of Hallowed Gourd. Can be planted in same locations where Green Thumb harvesting is permitted. Is visible (in tile/area description) and can be harvested by anyone after they have matured (xx amount of time has passed). Gourds can then be broken (used in inventory) to give 2-4 gourd seeds (ranged throwing weapons which explode on contact, basically grenades which deal exotic damage).

Sugg 2

• If Green Thumb is purchased, attacks by Verdant Sling inflict the Infectious Ivy (name WIP) status on enemies for 10 ticks. If the enemy dies under this status effect their body crumples into green dust, leaving behind 2-5 random natural components (clover, roses etc).

Sugg 3

• Verdant Sling is now a singular innate weapon with a max capacity of 30 ammo. Each component loaded gives +6 ammo, and the most recent ammo type loaded into the sling determines the damage (for example, loading paradise lilies into an empty sling gives 6 ammo that hit for 7 holy, and if immediately after that lichen is loaded in ammo count goes up to 12 and all attacks from it now hit for 9 impact etc).

[Nayru]

in lieu of a big review this 'late' i'll note that i generally approve of turning people into components

ignore that i'm running every possibly defiler exit currently

or the similarities

ignore me

[SaltedSalmon]

Don't make it a child skill.

Green Thumb is supposed to be Lightspeaker's counterpart to the Druidic Skills of other Petmasters. So we'd have WM's Spontaneous Generation, Lich's Grisly Reaping, and Lightspeaker's Green Thumb.
Making it a child of Verdant Sling would mean only thrown weapon Lightspeakers would be able to get it, or at least everyone else would be forced to pay a additional 30 CP tax before getting it. That's no bueno I think.

I do think Verdant Sling needs a buff so if you can make something cool I'll go with it.
But I think it would be better to tie it to Green Thumb in a more elegant way than just checking if you have a 2nd skill and then unlocking more stuff based on that.
Example: Maybe you can always use the Sling's secondary ability, but that ability is way more component hungry than the primary fire, so you're encouraged to have Green Thumb?

[Fellis]

This is a really cool idea, and a literal farming "time to grow thing" mechanic would be great, especially since I was looking at an inclusion of a mechanic like that already for another thing.

As for verdant sling, I think we will be examining that one when we go over innates more thoroughly. You are right that the large amount of ammo is very meh, especially since alchemy resource points are getting revamped. There are also a ton more components that make some sense for sling right now. The possibility of synergy with green thumb I had not considered, excellent connection!

The current list of sling missiles for anyone who wants to try their hand at some numbers revamps:

Batch of Mushrooms - 8 Impact damage
Bunch of Daisies - 9 Piercing damage
Bunch of Lillies - 9 Slashing damage
Bunch of Paradise Lillies - 7 Holy damage
Patch of Lichen - 9 Impact damage
Patch of Moss - 8 Slashing damage
Rose - 8 Piercing damage

The current list of alchemy components unused that make sense for this in my mind

Handful of Clover
Handful of Horehound
Mandrake Root
Piece of Amber (its natural!)
Sprig of Holly
Sprig of Nightshade

[MrFrank]

in lieu of a big review this 'late' i'll note that i generally approve of turning people into components

ignore that i'm running every possibly defiler exit currently

or the similarities

ignore me

I should mention that I'm not certain if I want corpses disappearing or not, it's more the flavor of bodies disintegrating into plant matter that I really like and can still leave bodies behind for desecration / Lich shenanigans. But if we do enable bodies disappearing only on Verdant Sling (plus Green Thumb requisite) kills it wouldn't be that bad I guess since it'd involve LS taking up throwing trees when most would probably want to opt into melee instead (or just leave the killing to their pets).

Don't make it a child skill.

Green Thumb is supposed to be Lightspeaker's counterpart to the Druidic Skills of other Petmasters. So we'd have WM's Spontaneous Generation, Lich's Grisly Reaping, and Lightspeaker's Green Thumb.
Making it a child of Verdant Sling would mean only thrown weapon Lightspeakers would be able to get it, or at least everyone else would be forced to pay a additional 30 CP tax before getting it. That's no bueno I think.

I do think Verdant Sling needs a buff so if you can make something cool I'll go with it.
But I think it would be better to tie it to Green Thumb in a more elegant way than just checking if you have a 2nd skill and then unlocking more stuff based on that.
Example: Maybe you can always use the Sling's secondary ability, but that ability is way more component hungry than the primary fire, so you're encouraged to have Green Thumb?

Thank you for mentioning the WM and Lich analogue skills, I haven't taken a comprehensive look at all the classes yet. And I completely agree making Green Thumb a child skill of Verdant Sling is awkward at best and a major hindrance at worst, so probably it might make more sense the other way around, or even just leave them independent as they currently are. Although making Sling a 60 CP child skill could provide the impetus to turn it into a more versatile and better realized skill.

As for your suggestion, I had something somewhat similar in mind where Green Thumb would enable a series of debuffs (could even be buffs which would make the Sling ally-targetable) on Sling attacks (I will talk about it more below). Your suggestion reminds me of "Soul Mode" (i.e. alternate, powered attacks) weapon mode in Amid Evil which sometimes significantly change the properties of weapons. Trying to think of a matching mechanic for NC might be a bit more difficult but worth it because presenting a choice is good in my eyes. LS would have to choose between steady and efficient ammo consumption, or something that eats up a lot more ammo but presents some other combat or non-combat benefit. I will think about it more.

This is a really cool idea, and a literal farming "time to grow thing" mechanic would be great, especially since I was looking at an inclusion of a mechanic like that already for another thing.

As for verdant sling, I think we will be examining that one when we go over innates more thoroughly. You are right that the large amount of ammo is very meh, especially since alchemy resource points are getting revamped. There are also a ton more components that make some sense for sling right now. The possibility of synergy with green thumb I had not considered, excellent connection!

The current list of sling missiles for anyone who wants to try their hand at some numbers revamps:

Batch of Mushrooms - 8 Impact damage
Bunch of Daisies - 9 Piercing damage
Bunch of Lillies - 9 Slashing damage
Bunch of Paradise Lillies - 7 Holy damage
Patch of Lichen - 9 Impact damage
Patch of Moss - 8 Slashing damage
Rose - 8 Piercing damage

The current list of alchemy components unused that make sense for this in my mind

Handful of Clover
Handful of Horehound
Mandrake Root
Piece of Amber (its natural!)
Sprig of Holly
Sprig of Nightshade

I had already been thinking about where new comps would fit in for Verdant Sling... in fact I had been trying to force them into another suggestion which I hadn't mentioned which was that for an MP cost Sling attacks would apply a stacking debuff to the opponent, the exact debuff dependent on the most recent component loaded into the sling. Unfortunately I was not able to compile a full list for various reasons.



As you can see I didn't get far. Also, I would add Chunk of Coral to that list of components for Sling as well

So for now I'm going to look into making more effects and better utilising components/ammo as per SaltedSalmon's recommendation. And also improving the gourd/growing suggestion which I'm quite fond of and I think fits well thematically with LS. Thank you Nayru, Salmon and Fellis with the suggestions so far. Would appreciate any other feedback.

[SaltedSalmon]

[Comment abrogated due to length, tl;dr don't make Green Thumb a requirement to Verdant Sling, it'd be better if it didn't have any forced/direct ties to, blahblahblahblah]

Thank you for mentioning the WM and Lich analogue skills, I haven't taken a comprehensive look at all the classes yet. And I completely agree making Green Thumb a child skill of Verdant Sling is awkward at best and a major hindrance at worst, so probably it might make more sense the other way around, or even just leave them independent as they currently are. Although making Sling a 60 CP child skill could provide the impetus to turn it into a more versatile and better realized skill.

As for your suggestion, I had something somewhat similar in mind where Green Thumb would enable a series of debuffs (could even be buffs which would make the Sling ally-targetable) on Sling attacks (I will talk about it more below). Your suggestion reminds me of "Soul Mode" (i.e. alternate, powered attacks) weapon mode in Amid Evil which sometimes significantly change the properties of weapons. Trying to think of a matching mechanic for NC might be a bit more difficult but worth it because presenting a choice is good in my eyes. LS would have to choose between steady and efficient ammo consumption, or something that eats up a lot more ammo but presents some other combat or non-combat benefit. I will think about it more.

If you need Verdant Sling to be 60 CP, that can be done without making it a child skill now. Or, it can also be a 30 CP Child Skill.
But to be clear, that's just something I wanted to point out, I think Verdant Sling can be upgraded without moving it around or increasing its CP requirement. Look at Keeper's Crook, It has two effects (Aethersprite Wrangling and not breaking Faunabound), and that skill doesn't require ammunition to use so you could make the Sling's effects a bit stronger compared to the Crook's.

EDIT: To chime in, my suggestion for a secondary effect for the sling is a ability to spread pollen around the area by spending components, causing a long lasting area effect which buffs allied Pets in the area.