It came to my attention a while back that the Necromancer class on the MUD had a large collection of glaring issues. With help from Winterstar and Lascelles I was able to sink a good deal of time into fixing myriad problems with the class. A list of the changes is presented below:
Summons
- Ghost, lesser and Ghost, greater were fixed such that the ability works as indicated in the helpfile.
- Ghoul, devouring no longer summons a skeletal fury instead. The ghoul now eats corpses on command.
- Ghoul, venomous no longer summons a lesser wraith instead.
- Greater shade now works.
- Shadow warrior now works.
- Summon Dracolich now has help file.
- Summon lich now works. Helpfile added to clarify current working.
- Wraith Lord no longer summons a Wraith Knight instead.
- Damage, AC, Stop, and abilities adjusted to make pets more comparable to golems, treants, phantasms, and other summons.
- Abilities adjusted to maintain themes for each line:
- Skeletons (and skeletal dragons) are aggressive, susceptible to fire and acid attacks.
- Ghouls are more resilient and immune to poison and draining attacks.
- Shades are incorporeal, making them harder to hit.
- Wraiths hit harder, possess potent cold-based attacks. Immune to cold, and draining attacks.
- As Necromancers rely on their pets as a primary damage source, all pets now incur NO PENALTY to earned XP. Go forth and raise an army!
- All summons now use dissolve(), meaning objects inside targeted corpses drop in the room instead of being destroyed. The same function is used when the Ghoul, Devouring feeds.
- All summons renamed to fit the "Type, Subtype" template.
Other spells
- Blackmantle works now. Help file has been updated to describe how it functions.
- Messages fixed on Soul whip. Fixed major typo in help file.
- Messages fixed on Shadow gate.
- Added damage formula to help file for sap and sap, minor
Runes
- Added par rune at level 100 to allow spectre touch to be learned at 106.
- Added bod rune at level 145 to allow backmantle to be learned at 148.
- Added met rune at level 54 to allow dispel magic to be learned at 54.
Skills
- Unearth corpse has been disabled for the time being.
- Necromancy i, ii, and iii renamed to Necromancy Mastery i, ii, and iii to better fit with the other mastery skills.
Help Files
- Help file for the necromancer class has been updated
- Help files for all the summons have been grouped by line (e.g. shades, wraiths, etc).
There's still a few issues that I will be working on as time goes on, namely:
- Zin'Carla doesn't work, might require new low-level features to be implemented.
- Necromancy Mastery doesn't actually do anything useful at present.
- Necromancers get alchemy (brew potions) but don't learn any useful
- Nethershield can't be brief'd like normal damageshield messages.
- Negative energy spells can't be aimed at undead minions, regardless of nice settings. Necromancers should be able to heal their pets.