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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.

I've been fiddling around with skills a bit more, having finally somewhat figured out how to get custom animations working. This is related to the file "skilleffectinfo.lub". Initially, I thought you could only use certain effects here, but it turns out you can add more effects by editing effectid.lub. Between the two, you can kinda add custom skill animations, but it's very janky. Target animations always work, but animations for the caster refuse to play for most skills for no reason that I've been able to determine. It could be related to the type of skill or some kind of hardcoding in the client file, but I've generally had to use workarounds involving the clif_skill_nodamage function for these sorts of animations. Anyway, I figured it might be a good time to give a summary of some of the skill changes I've made to the various classes. Some of these have been mentioned in previous posts, but many are new. I've also included a little bit of an explanation behind my thought process at the bottom of each entry. Lord Knight: - Bowling Bash now works. I completely recoded the skill so it now does what it's supposed to do, it knocks back a target and if it hits other targets they get knocked back too. It does more damage if at least one other target is hit. - Spear Stab is now a completely new ability called Pin Down, which has cast time but inflicts the ankle snare effect on enemies. This is because the original Spear Stab is almost the same as Bowling Bash. - Brandish Spear no longer has knockback, which improves its DPS since you can now spam it. - Knight has two new skills in "Calmness" and "Fast Metabolism". The former eliminates the Flee Penalty from being hit by many targets at once, which is good for Flee-based Knights. The latter increases the amount of healing received from healing items, similar to Increase HP Recovery, though it also affects SP items. - Concentration now slightly reduces cast time - Aura Blade is now a party skill that can also affect teammates, similar to Doram's buffs. It also now applies its damage to "fake" multihits (those that have a hit count in the negatives). - Has a completely new skill in "Blade Beam", a sword-exclusive skill that has cast time and shoots a projectile with splash damage that can cause Fear. This is actually a heavily reworked version of RK_WINDCUTTER. Lord Knight is a strange class in that it's good but its skill tree has a lot of issues. Almost all of the class's power is concentrated in Spiral Pierce, even though it has a million other active skills that never see use. The in-game descriptions of the class imply that it's supposed to be a tank, though it isn't really, it's basically just a bulky DPS, so when adding a few new skills I tried to give the class some tanking utility. I also wanted Sword-based LK to be more viable, since everyone always runs spear. Paladin: - Grand Cross's physical damage portion is slightly stronger, the physical and magical sides are about equal now (this also increases the recoil damage, however). - Pressure is its Renewal version, which deals strong magic damage instead of just dealing fixed damage, making it a drastically better skill. - Providence is significantly changed and is now exclusive to Paladin. It now gives other characters the effect of Faith and Endure, increasing Max HP and Holy Resist. It also now works on other Paladins, though you can't cast it on yourself. This was mainly changed because there was actually too much Demon Resist in the game, it was possible to get >90% resist to Demons, functionally trivializing some bosses. - Paladin now gets Pinpoint Attack (from Royal Guard). This skill no longer does an automatic critical and is mainly useful for its status effects. - Gospel now functions like a song, you can move and attack while using it. It no longer strips your buffs when you cast it, though the positive effects still don't affect the caster. It also makes a bigger cross at level 5 and above. In the old days, Paladin was a strong contender for the title of "most underwhelming transcendent class", with basically all of its transcendent skills being useless. This changed instantly with the change to Pressure, in fact I had to reduce its power a couple times, because when given a source of strong damage output Paladin instantly becomes a "master of all" who has no weaknesses. I feel like the fact that Paladin has low DPS against enemies who aren't weak to Holy is a key part of the class, so I tried to avoid giving it any significant damage buffs, and I also didn't want to give it anything that significantly improved its tankiness either. Spear Paladin has always felt quite weak to me, so I think the addition of Pinpoint attack helps a lot there, and the new Providence skill is an interesting buff for some fragile characters. It's also fun to actually be able to use Gospel. Assassin Cross: - Assassin has four completely new skills. The first three are "Numbing Poison", "Impairing Poison", and "Sapping Poison". These are passives that add stat debuffs to Poison status (for AGI, DEX, and STR, respectively), turning it into kind of an anti-Blessing status. - The fourth new skill is "Status Mastery", which increases the chance to inflict status conditions. This is now a prerequisite for Meteor Attack, which no longer requires Soul Breaker. - Venom Dust makes a larger cross at high levels. - Venom Splasher is its modern version, which has more power and doesn't require the target to have less than a certain percentage of its HP to be used. - Righthand Mastery and Lefthand Mastery now both have 10 levels. At Level 10 for Lefthand Mastery, the damage penalty for your left hand weapon is eliminated (previously the maximum damage you could get was 70%). - Assassin Cross can now learn Phantom Menace (from Guillotine Cross). This is a very situational ability that hits hidden characters with 100% hit rate. This mainly exists to deal with Stalkers, as it can hit people using Chase Walk. - Assassin Cross has a new ability in Poison Resist. This reduces the damage you take from Poison Element and reduces the chance to be Poisoned, but you lose 2% of your maximum HP per level of it that you take. This skill has some use but is mainly intended as a "penalty" skill to gatekeep EDP. - Create Deadly Poison requires 5 levels of Poison Resist. If you want to drink the poison bottle for an ASPD boost, it has to be maxed at level 10, costing you 20% of your maximum HP. - EDP is also a 10 level skill that has slightly less power at level 10 than it used to have at level 5. It's still extremely powerful, but it now makes you into a glass cannon, which I think makes sense. Note my abysmally low max HP at level 71. At least you can freely walk through Venom Dust now without ever being poisoned once this skill is maxed! Assassin is probably the most flawed class in the game. Pre-Rebirth Assassin has almost no skills that anyone cares about, in particular all of their poison skills are always ignored, but Assassin Cross is almost unquestionably the most powerful class in the game. It gets three absurdly strong new abilities in EDP, Soul Breaker, and Meteor Assault, all of which are best-in-class abilities of their respective types. Even then, Sin Cross still typically has a ton of points left over since they don't care about the rest of their abilities. One of the first things I wanted to do was make Poison more useful, since it's generally one of the wimpiest Status conditions but like half their skills revolve around it. I also think the ability to inflict status conditions more accurately also allows for a number of interesting status-based builds. I also use these new skills to make the super strong Sin Cross abilities more expensive to get your hands on, so you now typically have to pick and choose between them a little more. EDP Sin is also now a total glass cannon, which I think makes sense given how powerful it is. Stalker: - Chase Walk now consumes SP faster - Rogue has a new active skill in Rupture. This is a very strong attack that can only be used against enemies that are bleeding. Obviously, this synergizes well with Gouge from Thief for auto-attacker Rogues. - Stalker has a new ability in "Shadow Master". This is a passive that reduces damage taken from and increases damage dealt with Shadow Element. Rogue does not innately have any skills that do Shadow Damage, but there are lots of ways to get one (use a Shadow-element weapon, use Cursed Water, copy a Shadow skill using Intimidate, etc). - Stalker also now gets Shadow Form (from Shadow Chaser). This is an active skill that redirects damage from the Stalker to a target for a certain number of hits. In the base game, this skill can only be used on players, but I recoded it so you can use it on enemies as well (though MVPs are immune to it). This is one of the only abilities in the game that has a cooldown before you can use it again, to prevent it from being spammed over and over. Stalker is an interesting class with a lot of PVP applications and I mainly wanted to enhance that with these changes. Shadow Master is kind of interesting for mindgames in that it gives you more power at the expense of predictability. You won't be able to do anything to anyone using Bathory armor, but what if your Intimidate skill is Holy Cross or Grand Cross? Shadow Form is also the ultimate counter to Asura, allowing you to delete anyone who dares try to use it on you, but a clever attacker will try to bait it out first, since once it has been used you can safely Asura during the cooldown. Whitesmith: - Hammer Fall now has 10 levels and has a larger area at high levels than it used to. - Skin tempering also now has 10 levels, granting 10% neutral resist when maxed. - Blacksmith has a new ability in "Weapon Enchant", which adds bonus elemental damage to your (or an ally's) weapon. This is the same effect that Magnum break applies, but for a longer duration. The level of the skill determines the element of the bonus damage, between Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, and Shadow. It costs a Red Gemstone to use. - Whitesmith gets another ability based on this, "Release Enchant", which uses this enchantment to do a Pulse Strike-like attack using the element of the enchantment, though the buff is removed when using this. Yes, you can indeed use this with Magnum Break, if you have the Marine Sphere card. It costs a lot of SP though. - Whitesmith also gains access to Cart Cannon (from Geneticist). You have to craft the cannonballs yourself using a mini-furnace rather than them being buyable, so there's a new passive for "Cannonball Craft" as well. It's no secret that I've long found Whitesmith to be kind of an underwhelming class. I like the idea of it being kind of an offensive support-focused tank, but so much of its skill tree is dedicated to utility skills that it feels kind of underwhelming to use in combat. I think having the new buffs and Cart Cannon helps a lot with this. I had been looking at Cart Cannon for a long time, but it didn't really make sense for Creator, I think it functions far better as a Whitesmith skill. Cannonballs are a bit expensive to get in large numbers (the elemental cannonballs require Flame Hearts and the like), so the main use for them is probably for wiping out boss mobs, which they do pretty well since the damage doesn't divide among the targets. Creator: - As mentioned in another topic, resting a Homunculus puts it back into its Embryo, allowing you to raise multiple Homunculi. - Each of the Homunculi gets a new skill when evolved. Lif gets Eraser Cutter, Amistr gets Stahl Horn, Filir gets Needle of Paralyze, and Vanilmirth gets Steinwand. However, you have to be a Creator to evolve Homunculi (only the Creator can use the Sage Stone). - Bomb and Acid Terror now have 10 levels. Acid Demonstration requires a higher level of these skills to learn. - Alchemist has one new skill in Precision, which is a passive skill that increases hit. At level 5 and 10 it increases the range of skills like Potion Pitcher and Acid Terror by 1. - Creator now has access to four new skills, Crazy Vines, Mandragora Howling, Explosive Spore, and Blood Sucker, all from Geneticist. You can craft the items needed to use these skills using the pharmacy skill and a new book. - Creator also gets Duple Light (from Arch Bishop), which is renamed to Alchemical Weapon and needs a special item to use, which you also create using a new book. Not too much to say about Creator. It's already a pretty solid class. Precision and Alchemical Weapon are mainly there to add a bit more value to the generally ignored Axe Mastery, which serves as the root of this skill path, taking all of these skills can make Creator into a relatively solid auto-attacker now. I also wanted Cultivation to actually do something useful, so it's now the root of the new plant skills tree, which also gives more options besides Acid Demonstration (though that skill is still extremely strong). The biggest change is being able to store the homunculi, which makes them far nicer to use (I eventually got fed up and implemented this after failing like 10 straight times to get a Vanilimirth). Sniper: - Hunter gains access to a new skill, Fear Breeze (From Ranger). It's now a 10-level skill, that has slightly more power than it originally did at level 5. This skill (and all other skills that cause multi-hits, like Double Attack) is now able to critical hit (I actually never knew this wasn't the case until I tested it). This makes the Archer's Bullseye skill a lot more useful. - Hunter's skill tree is significantly refactored so the trap skills make more sense in terms of their prerequisites now (each now only relies on the one above it). - Sniper gains access to 3 new traps, Cluster Bomb, Burning Trap, and Icebound Trap (all from Ranger). These now just consume regular traps rather than special alloy traps. Sniper is another class that is generally very powerful, but also had a lot of skills no one ever used. Fear Breeze is an interesting skill, but it's so underpowered for Ranger that it needed buffs to even be viable as a regular Hunter skill, but now I think it's an interesting part of a trapper or auto-blitz beat build. I also wanted traps to feel more viable, and also for there to be more sources of some of the new status effects like Burning and Crystalize. An interesting note is that Ankle Snare is now harder to get, so you'll have to invest more points into traps if you want that (which you almost certainly still do). Clown / Gypsy: - Bard and Dancer can now normal attack while singing / dancing. - Bard and Dancer songs / dances now affect the user without needing Soul Link, though they drain significantly more SP. - Most Bard and Dancer songs are better. Apple of Idun heals more HP. Fortune's Kiss now raises LUK. Assassin Cross of Sunset now stacks with everything. - Bard and Dancer have a new active skill called "Up Tempo". This is basically an Instrument / Whip version of Two Hand Quicken. - Clown and Gypsy have a new passive skill in "Battle Rhythm", which grants Perfect Dodge while singing / dancing. - Arrow Vulcan has slightly more power, but Dex no longer reduces its cast time. - Clown and Gypsy have a new skill in Sonic Force / Sonic Lash, a melee-range active skill that is different between the two classes. Sonic Force has a knockback effect, while Sonic Lash hits 3 times and can inflict Bleeding. For both characters, this skill gains significant bonus damage from Strength. This can also be used while singing / dancing. - Clown and Gypsy also get the lost skill "Ragnarok". This skill is basically just continuous Meteor Storm, it drops a meteor within the skill's range every few seconds while the song is active. Unlike the original version, it doesn't hit allies. This was an interesting exercise in learning how to program timer skills. The main thing I wanted for Clown and Gypsy was for singing and dancing to feel more relevant, as many people totally ignore this to focus purely on burst damage through Arrow Vulcan. I also wanted to make their normal attack feel more relevant, to emphasize the fact that their new class-exclusive weapons are capable of melee attacks, considering they're mostly used in a near interchangeable way with bows. High Priest: - High Priest has 5 new skills, Coluceo Heal, Cantocandidus, Clementia, Lauda Agnus, and Lauda Ramus, (all from Arch Bishop). - These skills all rely on different Priest buffs to learn. Sanctuary, Magnificat, Suffragium, Kyrie, and Gloria, respectively. - Redemptio is deleted from existence (there's simply too much weirdness involving this skill and exp penalties and the like). High Priest is obviously a very good class, but it often feels like you don't really have a lot of options for build diversity. Having these new buffs rely on some of the lesser used buffs creates a lot more variety in terms of different builds for this class. Champion: - Monk has a completely new skill in "Status Barrier", which provides a one-time block against bad status. - Zen's cast time is no longer affected by Dex. - Champion gets three new skills in Crescent Elbow, Ride The Lightning and Howling of Lion (all from Sura). Ride the Lightning is an almost completely new skill. It now teleports to the target, similar to Snap, has a chance to inflict Stun, and also grants Combo status, allowing Chain Combo to be used immediately afterwards, followed by the rest of the chain if you have enough spirit spheres. This is probably the coolest skill ever. Champion is a pretty good class with a decent number of options. I like the new Status Barrier skill as a way for the class to give a little more PVE support, considering it does branch from a support class. Ride the Lightning is there to give a bit more power to combo-based Champion, and honestly I just think it's super cool. Howling of Lion is mostly there to prevent the newly buffed Bard and Dancer skills from being too strong, and Crescent Elbow is basically just something that's interesting and different. High Wizard: - Napalm Vulcan is now a 10 level skill, but at max level it does more hits and does more damage than it used to. - Gravitation is a mix of its old and new versions. It has the new proper damage from the new formula, but it also applies the reduced Attack Speed debuff from the old version. - High Wizard has a totally new skill in Ancient Curse. This is an Undead Element spell that can inflict the Curse status. Unfortunately, a ton of enemies also have this spell. High Wizard is another one of those classes that originally only had one relevant skill, in Amplify Magic Power. It's a very good skill, undoubtedly, but it still felt a bit dull. With Napalm Vulcan now being a proper nuke (albeit, not against Neutral armor) and Gravitation being a pretty relevant debuff, it now feels pretty good. Ancient Curse was mainly just added because I wanted more sources of Undead damage in the game, currently only like 2 enemy-only spells hit that element. On my server, Undead always hits Neutral armor for 100% damage (unlike dark, which is resisted at higher levels), so it's a very reliable element even if it isn't super strong. Professor: - Memorize now affects the whole party. - Autospell can cast more spells, like Storm Gust and Lord of Vermillion (you need equipment or to be a Super Novice to take advantage of this, though). - Sage has a totally new spell in Poison Splash (as shown before) - Professor has two new spells in Arrullo and Kyomu (from Sorcerer and Kagerou, respectively). These are renamed to Sleep Mist and Disable. Professor was another one of those classes that always felt underwhelming in the past, with the main appeal simply being Double Bolt. I discussed previously about the changes to autospell, which make the class feel a lot better, but I figured it would also probably need a little bit of help against magic reflect, which it is otherwise completely helpless against (Wizard at least has ground target spells it can use, the only one Professor has is Heaven's Drive). Arrullo is mostly just there because I wanted something that could inflict Deep Sleep. Whew, this was long. I've already talked a lot about the other classes previously, but I guess I can quickly touch on one new skill for Soul Linker, which is called Eskon. It's a rebirth-only skill that deals damage based on the number of debuffs on a target, which it also removes after it hits. It can hit very hard if a target is very significantly debuffed, and many of the other Es- skills are debuffs, so it presents kind of an alternate combo route if you want to use those skills instead. Also, you get to blow people up. Poor, poor Lunatic.

If you want status resistance of GTB still work as normal, then there's a battle config for it: items.conf Be careful because it will also affect other cards that grant bNoMagicDamage of similar or higher power. If you only want Lex Aeteran and Decrease Agi to be blocked but nothing else then you'll need to edit the source code: status.cpp -> status_get_sc_def

As I did last year, I will make my contribution to the community this year SKIN CODED + PHP + PSD Finish ?