Sorcery and the occult, a prepared sorcerer/occultist is supposed to be a dangerous encounter

Conan Exiles General Discussion
,
1

I have been thinking about Sorcery for a while, and more or less feel like it doesn’t quite hit the right spot yet when it comes to the current palate of spells available, their application and the overall notion that sorcerers can be quite dangerous with proper preparation or when venturing into their territory.

Honestly, i simply wouldn’t mind for as limiting heavy corruption can be for it to give more gravitas to certain sorcery spells and approaches. Especially in how short lived some spells are, and how the preparation factor is mostly tied to resource gathering.

For example; there used to be a time when several consumables such as alcohol and food would stack and you could truly and well feast, making it so you could really have a round of preparation in your feasting hall before heading out to do whatever demanding content you wished to do. With a time limit of course.

Now, there ARE several things such as the summoning of the abyssal mount, zombies and armour to add a bit to the sorcery preparation factor. What would drive it home a bit more for me personally is a form of ritual or pact perhaps possible only with maximum corruption.

What this idea translates to:

You can perform a small number of pacts or rites at the Sorceror Circle, or perhaps the religious altars requiring various resources and applying a single Zeal charge of sorts to your character until death.

This ‘Zeal Charge’ or mark cannot be removed without dying, and prevents any other charges/marks from applying.

When the lengthy ritual is completed with the help of thralls, sacrifices, resources, offerings, etc. the effects of the pact of choice will take effect.

Some broad examples for flavour:

Tenebrous Shadow Pact applies:

-Disallows mount use;
-Slower fall speed and reduced fall damage;

  • Increased climbing and -walking- (not sprint) stamina and speed, significantly increases dodge and jump distance and speed;
  • Grants Night Vision;
  • Greatly increases duration and (if applicable) radius/health of Darkness, Slow Fall, invisibility and Mirror Mark;

Cruel Fleshmonger Pact applies:

  • Reduces player healing received from any source by 50%;
  • Increases maximum player health by 33%;
  • Increases follower (direct) damage taken by 20%;
  • Grants player immunity to status effects;
  • Increases duration and movement speed of Abyssal summons, Call of the Dead, Zombies & Demon from AUTH build and Call of Nergal;

Deranged Bloodthirster Pact applies:

  • Removes and prevents food, alcohol and potion bonuses;
  • Decreases stamina use for attacks and blocking by 33%;
  • Increases combo damage by 5% per combo hit up to a max. 15%;
  • Grants short 10% damage reduction on succesful block or special attack for player and followers seperately;
  • Additionally highlights NPCs & players when using Detect Resources, Fire Wall, Wisp and Mass Cull spells;

Feral Monstrosity pact applies:

  • Only allows use of bestial companions and follower mount;
  • Increases damage (20%) and health (50%) of animal thralls, makes animal thrall attacks unblockable;
  • Increases player and thrall movement speed by 12% if player has an active animal follower;
    -Increases AGI, STR and GRIT by 10 for player and 25 for followers;
    -Increases radius of Lightning Storm and grants the player long lasting immunity to status effects after casting;

Warped Transient pact applies:

  • Disallows use of thralls of any kind;
  • Increases effect of all consumables including throwables by 50%;
  • Significantly increases player stagger resistance against light attacks;
  • Increases Carry Weight (50) and grit (10);
  • Greatly increases duration of wisps and Invisibility self, casting spells applies spectral coating effect on hotwheel weapons or player.

Say you decide to fully lock in on 50% corruption with half of your health missing. You will enjoy several corrupted perks but arguably any regular player will still outlast you and outmaneuver you more easily with more stamina and health at their disposal. They will also largely have all options available to them in order to engage you in whichever way they deem fit.

However, now with preparation you can choose one heavy handed approach with significant downsides— downsides that can potentially be identified fairly quickly if the corrupted player is not subtle in their appearance and approach which are not easily established during a skirmish or foray away from your bases or forward stations.

Of all of these pacts i’d consider the drawbacks to be significant enough and recognisable enough where necessary for players to quickly act upon it and exploit their weaknesses, it would also add some variety and flavour to what sorcery can potentially bring to the table. Animal companions could then also become more useful for mostly crowd control purposes.

I know this is all just a far fetched insufficiently thought out idea in regards to balancing and immersion, but i thought i’d share this impulsive idea as a form of example of a thought i’ve been entertaining for a little while.

There is also of course no way to, for example, lock in a player with the Warped Transient pact active to be unable to summon zombies or have the AUTH20 demon active, and there’s several other parameters and whatnot that likely are not easily modified either.

TLDR:

If anything i hope it makes for an entertaining read and might spark an idea to expand on the sorcerous side of things— even if it isn’t by adding new spells or creating something similar to what i cobbled together in this post.

2 Likes
2

I had an interesting idea about Sorcery a few months ago, my complaint was that Corruption was a resource that wasn’t being expended. As you cast more magic, you get more corrupted which allows better spells. There wasn’t a trade off except that corruption made you lose health and stamina. Unfortunately there wasn’t any reason to use Sorcery with this trade off in pretty much most styles of play except in Roleplay or in light PVE (or in very very specific ways that don’t really align with how everyone might want to play a sorcerer).

My post can be found here:

The idea was to see straight up buffs to sorcery in general. Make it dangerous, make it scary, make it so when someone knows they’ve encountered a sorcerer, they have a nasty fight on their hands.

But to see buffs like that, we need some restrictions and some effort and risk.

Much of the changes would happen with how Corruption is gained. It would more or less throw out the idea that corruption is this bad thing you get by playing in certain areas for too long or fighting and getting hit by certain creatures. You’d still gain corruption this way, but only to a point. Its an outdated system that was very similar to the Shrouded timer in Enshrouded. It existed as a limit to how long you could be in certain areas. Since its a resource, that doesn’t make much sense (and its default rate is painfully slow and not really noticeable, especially if you get in range of a dancer).

Corruption would take more effort to gain. Like a lot of effort. Clans would likely have one sorcerer and use their resources to get them to the level of spell casting they need. And the benefits would match the effort. Solo players could still become powerful sorcerers. Using the resources of clans that come to them (like the hermit in the Conan movie) to get spells and rituals done they cannot perform themselves. And for the singleplayer, they have server settings to toy around with.

But to get it there, we’re talking significant buffs and additions, as well as significant changes to how corruption is gained.

3

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.