I would like to request that the witch doctor feat remain in the game. I know the undead in that feat don’t even begin to compare to the new resurrected corpses in terms of strength but that’s not the point. If you’re going for an haunted or undead theme they do make great set pieces. They look much better than the resurrected corpses and are just right for setting a theme for your build if that’s what you’re going for.
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While I would initially agree, something tells me that a future update may re-implement stuff from Witch Doctor.
At least I hope so.
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When I posted the question in the live stream, @den was without hesitation in his answer that they were gone. This wasn’t an ‘oh yeah we forgot about this’. This was a design decision that they do not fit in the motif of the sorcery defined in 3.0 and it was excised from access. However the back code is still there so that modders could resurrect them ( 
)if needed. Now I love these “pets” as much as anyone else and put out there that the work that was done on them was excellent and with the 3.0 thrall nerf, they actually shine. However I asked the question because the Witch Doctor feat was sort of…not right and I agree it doesn’t fit with how they are doing things now. I hope they find alternative ways of implementing these skins elsewhere that are more to the liking of sorcery…even if it was just skins we can apply to our current thralls via a BP or store skin (like the undead and wight horse skin) but that would require something new to happen; ability to change the thralls’ appearances. A nice shameless plug for a QoL feature in a future chapter of the Age of Sorcery that would also reintroduce the undead skins, at least the humanoid ones. The only undead pet that wouldn’t fit is the monstrosity since you can’t get a tamed serpentman. The closest I can think of is a gorilla but the attacks are different and that may be the final casualty of this glimmer of hope because i can’t think of a way that we can get that back.
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The exact quote was:
“The reason [we removed them] is we wanted to go forward with certain paradigms for undead followers and the existing Witch Doctor followers didn’t fit those paradigms, so we pulled them out.” (1:13:46)
And I firmly disagree with it. They didn’t take it out because of it not incorporating corruption or sorcery; they took it out because it isn’t using the new undead paradigm (ie, temporary followers, max power on spawn, power based on source thrall). I hate that. I hate all temporary systems, whether my pet lasts 3 days or 10 minutes. Part of the appeal to this game is collection and building forward. Temporary systems setting back that progress are as undesirable to me as legendary items having an expiration time, and it’s even more frustrating when the expiring object in question is something I really like (silent legion warriors, undead hyenas, undead monstrosities). Even more frustrating is the outright arbitrary removal of something already in the game with nothing (currently) making up for it. It’s a big dampener on a patch that was meant to be exciting.
Furthermore, expiring skeletons is out-of-place with the in-game lore. All of the undead skeletons in the game are not temporary. Whether it’s the darfari undead village, the skeletons around Unnamed City, or the Silent Legion soldiers, all of them have been “alive” for decades or centuries by the time our players stumble across them, and odds are they would still be there centuries after too. The means of producing them is clearly a different manner than the temporary resurrected zombies we learn from that two-bit sorcerer we steal the Shallow Grave spell from, from a lore perspective.
But I’m not without compromise, and I agree with your own argument: it doesn’t have an appropriate tie-in to the new corruption or sorcery mechanics. On top of that, the lore description of the skeletons produced by the darfari could very well fit in with the new sorcery. For reference, in the scout’s report about it, a cauldron of some darfari liquid is poured over bodies (both living and dead), which melted away their flesh, and they stood up and moved even as only skeletons. The Witch Doctor feat had you collect bones and pop skeletons out of a pot instead, which didn’t really fit the lore.
A reworked sorcery Witch Doctor could have you place a thrall (or pet! Undead hyenas/monstrosities still please!) in a bone cage, craft a cauldron of that liquid at its bench, and then perform a ritual of pouring it over the thrall/pet to melt them into a skeleton which stands up. And taking aspects of the “new undead paradigm,” the new undead pet could have it’s power based on the base thrall (or continue the RNG chance of greater pets, as with the current/old system). I imagine the devs themselves were already thinking this at the time of removal. My complaint is just 1) removal of something I already had and like, and 2) I really don’t want them to become a temporary system.
8 Likes
Well I will say I spent a very large chunk since that live stream to now collecting undead and corrupted bones. I have 45 wights, 12 legionnaires, 20 skeleton warriors, 10 skeletons and 20 monstrosities in the fridge on one server and about half that on the PvE side.
As nice as that option is, my friends want to start fresh on an official server when the patch drops. Our plan is to let the new player decide where to build the base and proceed from, so having an establish necromancer legion outpost somewhere on the map somewhat diminishes that. 
The only thing I can tell you is that silent legion armor works great with bear shaman helmets and that makes your thralls look like legionnaires.
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I still think it’s a bad move to remove a working system that people like. It’s still a corruption based system so I don’t buy the logic behind it. And as I said before, they look really good. If they want to nerf them a bit fine, I’m fine with that. I’d even be ok with having them as little more than set pieces with little actual combat ability. It wouldn’t be ideal but it’s better than nothing.
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It’s a good request. I can agree.
That doesn’t mean squat! It can change as other things regularly do.
can easily coexist!
What the easiest way to get corrupted bones anyway?
I don’t think it’s a “bad move” but yeah, I’d like to see them keep what they had. It wasn’t very useful but it was kinda cool! If @den can agree then maybe we will see it reappear in 3.1 or something…
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summoning place in the chests. Powder of corruption which you make into the bones. refreshes around every 10-15 minutes so it’s not too late to grind it out.
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At least for one more day 
I thought I had read they will/maybe adding them in to sorcerer later 
Wait, the new undead are supposed to be temporary?
They don’t seem to be temporary to me. They seem to be permanent.
From what I have been told, they do rot away but it takes days.
And using them extends their lifetime - if I understood it right.
Well then that changes everything if that is the case. Upkeep is easier if I can refresh based on damage done.
Yeah, I think it’s a mechanic to prevent people from building those standing armies we see in 2.8 and previous versions… Again though, I’m not entirely sure I’m understood or are remembering it correctly.
Mods will put it back in but from what I heard, base game is immutable on this front.
Of course… there will be mods that do anything and everything…
Wanna make all humans walk on their hands and fight with their feet… there’s likely a mod for it.
In this case, they left the feat and stuff in the devkit, so its as simple as adding an interactible and adding back the powder to the loot tables. Its super easy vs the other mods that do anything and would work exactly the same as before.
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If you enable Creative Mode, then go into the Alchemy Bench, the options to create the old style craftable Undead, using the exact recipes as before. Not sure if the Powder is still dropping, have not seen it in a while.