Thematically, this is good. However from a gameplay standpoint this would effectively drive everyone to either corrupted builds, or more cowardly builds hiding behind followers. Without a way for clean builds to regain health in a quick manner, that would altogether eliminate tank builds. At that point, it would start to contradict the lore in a wraparound way. Some people want to play as if they were Conan, throwing themselves into a fight and attacking with reckless intensity. Denying that playstyle sustained survivability kills the sword theme from sword and sorcery.

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Ok, I sort of get what you’re saying there, but it’s a sorcerer not a vampire, and their respective minions have different implied lore-logic. Even minions who may be willing to sacrifice themselves in battle against your enemies are not necessarily going to be happy just acting like human batteries.

As far as lore goes, it also feels more right to me that a sorcerer would have their minions attack some helpless target in order to provide healing energies for the sorcerer they serve. Attacking enemies (or even animals) in order to heal their master makes more sense than being a human healing-fountain.

Also, from a gameplay point of view it makes more sense. At some point there has to be consideration for the fact that it’s a game. We as players are supposed to be balancing our various needs, which includes carrying enough healing supplies or recognizing that it’s time to end the expedition and head back to base.

Yeah, I can see that, but it still sounds more like a vampire to me than a sorcerer.

Haha yeah, regardless of the topic I think just about everyone can share your saltiness on this issue.

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It depends on how the balance is struck.
Also, it depends upon how the non corrupted perks work in counter play.
This is by no means an easy balancing act, not probable and barely plausible.

If fast healing is, perhaps, in a different line where the opportunity cost is the ability to not lose more than a third of health from a single strike, that may be the better balance.

Also, fast healing from demon blood slurpies could work for everyone, gain corruption and HP.
The corrupted organism just benefits more from it, or can drink the demon blood raw for the same affect.

So fast healing isn’t tied to a corruption build, but it’s inherently unnatural qualities make it corrupting and those who delve into the darkness digest it better.

I’ve always looked at Healing and Health in video games as abstractions.

Let’s look at Dungeons and Dragons. One of the first game systems to use hit points (its not the first, but it was the most prolific). If you have a decently leveled Fighter with 60hp that takes 30 damage. He has 30hp left. Is he half dead? No. He’s at full fighting capacity all the way from 60hp to 1hp.

At 0hp he is downed. At -1hp to -9hp he is dying. At -10hp he is dead.

A blow to that fighter that does 30 damage is a strong blow but one he can shrug off. He’s not even seriously injured. No broken bones, no fractures, no serious bleeding, no concussion, no hindering lacerations, just a few non-hindering contusions, scraps, or minor cuts.

If you had a slightly lower level Ranger at 40hp take that same 30 damage hit. He is likewise still on their feet and fighting trim. It hurt more. But it didn’t injure that ranger anymore than the above fighter.

What about a Magic-User with 25hp? 30 damage to them would not only knock them down, but seriously injure them enough to threaten their life and the injury caused them to slowly bleed out. But ironically, if they are patched up with a cure potion or spell to get them to 0hp they are no longer in danger of dying and are merely winded enough not to be able to take any meaningful actions until they have time to rest. If they go to 1hp they are fighting trim like a 60hp max hp fighter.

Well that covers health, but what about healing? If a 60hp Fighter loses 30hp and is in no danger of injury or death until they lose another 30hp, what does healing actually do?

Good question. If there is no difference between a 60hp Fighter at max health, and one at half health down to 30hp in injury and status apart from minor cuts, scraps, and contusions to show for it. What is the healing actually doing?

Well its never really been stated exactly what that is, but over the decades its sort of been described as an innate ‘toughness’ and ‘resolve’ of the individual. So in the example of the 60hp fighter taking a 30 damage hit doesn’t take an injury, but instead it takes a tole on the fighter’s ability to withstand an injury. Its an abstraction.

Think of an action movie where the hero and the villain are trading blows. They don’t seem to slow down at first. But over the fight they do. And eventually you see the blow that ends the fight and there is an injury or death that comes from it. Its effectively similar.

We’re playing a fantasy (and I don’t mean the fantasy genre here) where we play heroes and villains and we have these fights. Realistic fighting would entail us taking debilitating and life threatening injuries from any blow, and fighting things such as giants and monsters would be near impossible for our human characters.

So when we heal, our resolve is restored. These potions and these bandages aren’t healing life or limb threatening injuries. They’re making our characters feel good enough or restoring their energy a bit (kinda like a 5-hour energy or coffee), enough to give them the grit to keep going. Healing wraps sooth and make those little cuts and scrapes feel a bit better or numb the pain of them to make focusing on combat and adventuring easier. In a lore sense our characters will eventually have to rest up and sleep some of the more nastier effects of exhaustion off. This is obviously also handled abstractly since looking at a sleeping character is boring.

But at the end of the day, healing potion and healing wraps works in our heads from a player perspective of “oh yeah, I do this, and my character feels better.” Its just immersive enough to make sense, and not too far into fantasy that we’re like… wait… wut?

Other games have mushrooms, orbs, or hearts to handle healing damage in a gamey gimmicky fashion that works for them because immersion isn’t nearly as important. But for a game like Conan. We have to use lore, thematics, immersion, as well as fun gameplay to handle most of the mechanics.

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I didn’t say i want those specific things, i just wanted an explanation why so many people are against it.

Because as i said, i‘m not a lore expert.
Thx for the insight btw.

But sorcery is very clunky nonetheless, a lot of spells are useless. Like that darkness spell that doesn’t even affect npc’s for example.
Some sort of faster spells would be nice.
If telekinesis could be a thing lore wise, i would take that! Why not.
Slamming enemies into each other or throwing environment after them could be really badass.

But i have to ask then, how does the ice bridge and the fire wall fit into all this?
Just curious. :sweat_smile:

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Other than the discussion here about the balance between lore and gamification, in order to get a real good sense as to the “why” that @Jimbo passionately talks about is literally reading the books.

I did a contract job during covid that was painfully repetitive and boring, my gosh talk about falling into depths of nihilism XD I had read one of the books way back when and couldn’t remember it very well. So what I did was throw on the audiobooks on Youtube. Most are free there. I highly suggest it as it gives a lot more depth to the game ^^

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It’s meant to be slow and methodical. Sorcery is planned and prepared, not cast on the fly.

It’s supposed to, it inflicts fear on human NPCs.

There exist whole galaxies of dimensions between the spaces of human perception. Substances in the Outer Dark have a material, but not of any composition that follows earthly laws. One of sorcerous intent can, with the proper skills, reach sidewise into the nighted gulfs and pull forth some of these weird substances

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I like the back and forth people seem to be having about sorcery/corruption on the forums in general.

First, I’d like to pose a couple questions. How many people think sorcery is in a good spot in general? Are corruption builds more useful as often as they are less? If there’s a gap there, is there a good enough reason to pursue the builds given that gap or are most players just settling because they enjoy the thought or the kind of style it offers?

I think there is a large margin between the utility of sorcerer builds and non-corrupt builds in general with the spells given. Anybody can cast these spells should they corrupt themselves to take advantage of a spell at any time and then be able to brush away the corruption. While the non-corruption build user can get rid of the corruption, the corruption build is stuck with it, so my thoughts lead me to believe there must be more ways for the corruption builds to have worth than they currently do. I fight alright, but the general use case I see is that these builds don’t stack up in as many ways as they are torn down. Now, to get to some observations:


That’s exactly right. What makes a game fun is typically the systems of it. What gives the game its identity and flavor are the choices on how these systems are introduced and merge with the base story or lore. The example you gave on potions and the magical properties is perfect (which is why it is so widely used) because these things are known in nearly all context to have these magical/mystical properties even when logic could crush that in an instance. It’s the flick of the moment plausible realism that can tie the two concepts and that is more than enough for most. I fear that some fans of games wish to see systems that fully adhere to lore that would in fact make a far less game though not necessarily a less interesting one.

Taemien said basically the same sort of thing here, and of course I fully agree.


And each player should be entitled to their form of fun so long as a fun balance is kept. should every build be a copy of the next or be able to fight any other build? No. But, under the correct circumstances every build should have true and meaningful advantages over others.


But wait, isn’t that the redundancy we were talking about? At 25% reduction at 10 grit, a 20 grit char would get 50% with a 50% stamina bar. I’m not entirely opposed even if it reads as I think, but maybe I’m missing something.


This is one change I see that fits the bill. It provides a corrupted build with a means of healing that another build would not have. I would not say that it is overkill by any stretch, but between having low health due to corruption anyways, it can come in clutch for a synergizing playstyle.


I’m not so sure on this. People are (as a majority) choosing to not use corruption because of all the downsides anyways. Half-dependable corruption builds are already using Grit to take advantage of Steel-Thewed. The layer of corruption perks here would gift the opportunity of choice here rather than the system as it is. Purely on the thoughts of gameplay, a missed attack will cost you if its a stamina siphon. My thought here is that perhaps it should be based of the damage you do and not necessarily a direct siphon that steals from your opponent, because that would become a stunlock system.


Feeding into what you’re saying and trying to not detract, I think its obvious enough that the healing at that point is providing the described character with an opportunity to heal so that the next blow does not cause the same condition that the magic user you mentioned faced. I find it tough to tie in more realism to that. A gravely injured magic user needs less to heal to a full extent than a gravely injured warrior and it becomes a little lopsided.


While I want to hope that a good balance can be made here I think that its tough to deny this take. A better balance which would keep the systems similar in feel to the way they are while also not crippling the lore is a difficult goal and a rough bar to set for an expectation. It would be appreciated, because even playing in a genuinely thoughtful manner as a sorcerer will usually set you at an overall disadvantage even upon taking all routes to success. You have to rely on knowledge of mechanics, general skill of yourself, the understanding of the skill/abilities of your opponent(s), and without question luck in this game due to a healthy helping of jank at times.

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This is an interesting set of questions.

First one is pretty complex as sorcery has multiple facets. First one being its immersion and thematics. I would say Funcom did an excellent job here. When I play a character delving into sorcery, it feels like I’m delving into stuff people shouldn’t be touching. It feels forbidden, it feels like I’m doing something wrong. And it does look amazing throughout the process.

The spells available are kinda hit and miss. Some of them I really enjoy. Spells like the wisp (in its current iteration), Cull Resources, Lightning Storm, etc. Are really good tools to add to my kit. Some spells are kinda meh. And unfortunately some spells just don’t have a use. Spells like the darkness spell, the detect corruption spell, and fire wall. I’d like to see the Ice Bridge go back to its pre-nerf state where you can summon multiple bridges, I’d like to see the mass undead summon get a boost in health. The darkness spell needs a feature added to the game where darkness does conceal you from NPCs. It does nothing in PVE now because of that.

Corruption builds (since you inquired about this specifically) are in a bad spot. I use corruption based builds only enough to have enough corruption to cast my spells, but I avoid most of the perks. They aren’t as good as the ones they replace (except for the health regeneration one). So if I’m cutting out a perk, I make sure its one that isn’t as useful most times. I generally avoid being more than 20% permanently corrupted, mainly due to the stamina loss.

So to answer the question posed, no, corruption builds are never as useful as they are not. If anyone is using one they are either ignorant, play in SP with settings making the game easy mode, or they are doing it simply to have access to T3 spells at the ready and have enough support and resources to justify it.

As someone who has leveled several sorcerer type characters, you cannot reliably level with a max corruption build without making significant changes in how you approach challenges. Meaning stuff you could normally take on at low level just have to be put off till much later. And by then you’re pretty much cheesing stuff.

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Without being incredibly lengthy again, I’ll say @Taemien is illustrating my exact point. It can be fun, but there are no peaks that it feels like it truly excels. I think that while spell variety is a big part of it, I think part of @Fractured_Vessel’s complaints point towards how useful these sorceries and builds are in general. That’s where full support of the current set of spells and perks falls apart in my opinion. It’s less about what is available, because most of that is fine. It’s more about what isn’t… and to be clear, I’m not talking about fireballs here, just other casts of a more offensive nature.

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Someone a while back mentioned flasks and I agree, I think of that scene in the movie 300 where the sorcerers were using their magic against the Spartans.

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This was the result.

May Set be with you :snake:

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Or from a big gun, depending on whether you’re reading Clarke or Tayler.

In this case, the desired effect is the same, regardless.

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The best I can say is to take a look at some game play videos.
You’ll find out soon enough.

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