Having altered the playable characters into a near-unrecognizable state, I next set my sights on the Homunculi, which I actually kind of don't recommend as the Homunculi are janky.
For starters, I made an update to my previously release Homunculus storage function. Now, Homunculi go into named Embryos when you rest them, and you can call them back out with a dialog box. Having a bunch of Homunculi has never been easier!
If you want this function on your server I provide the steps to add it here:
However, that got me thinking. It's a little weird that there's 2 clones of each homunculus that are exactly the same except for looks. Wouldn't it be nice if they were different? They do have unique skill trees in the homun-skill-tree file, so I made some new skills for them.
It turns out making new Homunculus skills sucks. Although you can adjust the MAX_HOM_SKILL in the code, the client has a predefined list of skills that can be homunculus skills and you can't change this. This means that to add new Homunculus skills, you have to replace existing ones, which is lame. Oh well. I cannibalized Eleanor for these new moves, since my server doesn't have Homunculus S and none of her skills were of any use to the other Homunculi anyway. As such, now all of the alternate Homunculi have a new alternate base skill. I also gave each Homunculus a sixth skill, which we'll get to in a moment, and I gave the alternate homunculi new names. All the rest of their skills are the same as the base versions.
Lif and Raf:
- Raf's new base skill is Healing Wind. This places a healing zone on the ground, similar to Sanctuary, though it doesn't affect monsters in any way and is a lot weaker (though it does scale with level and such). Compared to Touch of Heal (which on my server doesn't need a potion to use and Lif will target either herself or the master depending on who has lower health), it has less healing power, but it has the added bonus of also being able to heal your party members, which Touch of Heal can't.
- Lif's new 6th skill is Holy Pole, which was one of Bayeri's abilities.
- Raf's new 6th skill is Volcanic Ash, which was one of Dieter's abilities. I think Raf seems more like a troublemaker compared to Lif.
Amistr and Gist:
- Gist's new base skill is Taunt. This is an AOE provoke around himself. On my server, Provoke has the extra effect that it prevents monsters from changing targets in some situations, so you can use this to draw attention away from yourself. It does have the unfortunate side effect of possibly drawing a lot of attention to Gist though.
- Amistr's new 6th skill is Lava Slide, from Dieter.
- Gist's new 6th skill is Magma Flow, also from Dieter. I think this makes sense since it's a counter, which synergizes with the taunt move.
Filir and Prit:
- Prit's new skill is Daybreak. This is very similar to Filir's Moonlight. It has less power and only hits once, but in exchange it has knockback. This is decent as a "get off me" move if you want to use ranged attacks.
- SBR44 is basically a totally new skill. It's now called Last Resort and uses the user's HP to do a powerful attack, similar to Final Strike. It doesn't directly lower intimacy, but the homunculus is very likely to die afterwards (it leaves it with 1 hp), which now does lose intimacy (I always thought it was weird that it didn't).
- Filir's new 6th skill is Xeno Slasher, from Eira. It has good power and can leave enemies bleeding, and it also gives Filir a ranged attack, but Filir's magic attack probably won't be too high.
- Prit's new 6th skill is Pyroclastic, from Dieter. This skill is slightly changed in that it loses the Hammer Fall chance, but instead grants slight HP Regen, which I think makes sense because Prit is probably supposed to be a Phoenix.
Vanilmirth and Slograth:
- Slograth's base skill is still Caprice, but it chooses different skills. Vanilmirth has the 4 bolt spells, while Slograth has Soul Strike, Dark Strike, Blood Sucker, and Holy Light. Blood Sucker is interesting because he can heal himself with it, but generally this element selection tends to be less reliable.
- Self Destruct no longer takes all your intimacy, but it does cost you a fair bit on top of the usual penalty for the homunculus dying.
- Vanilmirth's new 6th skill is Granitic Armor, from Dieter. I think the fact that this hurts you at the end fits with Vanilmirth's chaotic nature.
- Slograth's new 6th skill is Poison Mist. This is a rare poison-element spell, fitting Slograth's use of the non-conventional elements.
One last annoyance is that the game wouldn't display the skills in the right order in the homunculus skill tree. It turns out the homunculus skills are always sent in their skill_id order. I really didn't want to reorder them all, so I altered the clif method to send them in the same order as the skill tree. Thankfully, the client preserves the order they receive the skills in and doesn't auto-sort them. Phew! For once the client came through for me.