After playing a while, I found that zombies that are being made from NPC's are MUCH stronger than zombies that can be made from player's corpses (well, not player, but their characters, but anyways).

But it's a lot harder to produce zombies from the other players (in most cases).

And there is an idea. Why not let necromancers to raise really good zombies (quaggoth/aurumvorax quality) from the corpses that are made by necromancer? Very like dark feast works: if you made a kill, you will benefit from it; if kill is not yours - you will not.

I think it would be interesting, if zombies that are made from other players would be better than guaranteed zombies from NPC's. Perhaps they would do something in combat? Or have resists if they are fire giant or storm giant zombie? Or flying, if they are made of arial? Or have stoneskin, if they are made of svirf?

And etc. I am not asking for more power, no - I'm fine with the zombies that I can make. Just to make it a little more interesting.

We got to thinking and talking about more ways that what you make a zombie from could affect the abilities of the zombies. I've done a small bit of infrastructure that will make these changes easier in the future, as well as the following changes which are in now or a reboot from now or so:

- In order to have an inventory and/or be able to pick stuff up, a zombie will need "stuff-picking-up appendages", e.g. hands.
- A zombie made from a monster that can't leave water will be unable to leave water.
- A zombie made from a monster that has to remain underwater retains the same restriction.
- PC zombies are currently unaffected.

Admittedly, I'm curious where you are heading with this. But, I don't understand the water-zombie limitation. Breathing (or the lack thereof) isn't a problem for a zombie. A zombie clownfish, for instance, is definitely going to use its little, dead flippers to flop itself in range of your carotid artery. At least, that was my understanding.

You really think zombie whale should be rolling itself down Eastern Road at a clipping pace?

I'm also waiting for zombies of pink gay elephants.

You know you want to.

You already put in unicorns, what more could we ask for?

I suppose it's as silly as, say, a necromancer.

But, if we're being critical about the notion of sea life roving around on land...sure, no problem there. Being a zombie takes away pain, fear, the need for oxygen, and most importantly, free will. So, I don't really see a reason why a zombie whale couldn't be caterpillaring its way around the mainland.

Since "your zombie fights like ass on land, and takes 10x as long as anything else to lumber from room to room" takes longer to code and "you just can't take the zombie whale on land" was fast to code, you got #2.

nt

You go to your room and work on the damned shaman revamp instead of splitting hairs with zombies! Ass!

:7

Or what was it you said on the battlefield board? ;)

Y'all can blow me. :P

nt

nt

(Still one of the funniest posts ever to me.)

nt

"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president."

But you cannot make zombies underwater (water prevents etc etc etc).
Did you change it and zombies can be made underwater now?

Correct, but you could pick up the corpse and run for dry land.

Worthy for a reward, not penalty :)
Ok, point taken. Sounds reasonable.

Would be cool if zombies got something for eating brains. I'm just sayin'...

.

Making PC zombies interesting is a goal I've had in the back of my head for a long time, but which has yet to make it to the top of the to-do list.

I agree that some form of it is something I'd like to see, but it's not something I'm going to work on soon.

Maybe let zombies from PC corpses wield a weapon and wear up to 3 pieces of gear? I figure you can use most of the golem code to do that. A horde of zombies with prayer beads... hehe (yeah I know align restriction but cool)

That's so not quick, even if it is dirty. :P

To reuse dark feast algorythm, if it's possible and if it fired - make corpse +20 levels (so it will be 71 max), 50 leve for 30th level of the player and etc.

Dunno if it's a quick fix though, but surely quicker than making weapon-armor using zombies, and not so unbalanced.

I was thinking maybe +5 levels to corpse maximum, (for level 56 max zombies, similar to strong npc zombies but not quite as powerful as the best ones) and then add some cool flavor stuff.

If you killed fortress guy yourself and then raised his corpse, and fought evil characters with the zombie, he occasionally prog some sexy fire echoes and do fire damage instead of punch, or .

If you killed scion mage yourself and then raised his corpse, he prog interesting shadow echoes on command and gives the necro a buff from the shadow plane - maybe extra dam redux against negative or something that is very interesting from an RP perspective and very limited from a PK perspective.

You could also add drawbacks to certain zombies, too. Fort zombie explodes in a cascade of flame after a certain time with the necro, blasting everyone in the room. Zombie of a thirsted rager will eventually start attacking everything you walk past.

Stuff like that. It would make player zombies more interesting but not overpowered. You'd still use unicorns or whatever if you wanted max power, since you can do better than level 57 zombies, but you could get some cool RP opportunities and flavor from each corpse that might outweigh small power considerations.

Unicorns are 62, firedrakes higher. There are plenty of regular mobs of 60th level that are very easy to kill, and they are not supreme zombies.

When you are making undead, it's level is slightly lower than of original in most cases. And players are far more difficult to kill than those 60th level mobs.

56 level corpse will give you 52-55 level zombie (I think), so it will be weaker than usual mobs (even storm lieutenants/commander).

Level + 10 for PC corpses and + extra damroll.

Would sword-spec zombies be cool? Yeah but lets face it, that's hard to balance and get right and it's not really necessary.

So maybe have like 4 tiers of zombie and 4 classes (melee, rogue, priest, mage that or make one for each class)

Tiers could just rip off the A-P charge equation so if you make a zombie from a really super powered char you get a sick zombie but if you pop joe herald its nothing really special.

so lets just use a thief as an example

weak thief = bag of tricks, dirt kick
medium thief = above + trip, gouge
disgusting awsome thief = above + circle, cheap shot.

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n/t

Having fought a zombie horde where one of them was wielding the Pincer staff, I personally don't like the idea of a pc running around with more npc's using gear, namely progging gear.

Because it's not like several mages have had 200+ pk wins recently :)

If the corpse is of a player that would be worth some AP charges, the zombie retains some memory of its life. It would have all the skills of the class and fight like a stupid mob of that class. A 1 or 2 charge zombie would do next to nothing. A 10 charge zombie would go ape####. Perhaps give the necro the ability to tell how strong the zombie would be.

Because Tavlin wasn't powerful enough as it was, lets have dirt/bash/trip/disarm zombies? This is kind of overboard.