[WIP]Alchemy, Shamanism, Witchcraft & Astral powers

[Distman]

I'm doing an expansion to the world of the tribals. The idea is to enhance and spice up the gameplay when playing tribals (or medieval societies) by introducing alchemy, enchantments and astral powers (i.e magic). The plan is to make the experience immersive and original. Since many of the effects will be both powerful to you and devastating for your foes, finding balance in the production by having several steps and needing rare, dangerous and expensive ingredients, as well as having side effects for overusing particular effects is a nice way to go. Researh are also necessary for most categories of production.

The idea is to divide the mod into four modules (so players can pick what they want to use, as well as making updating the mod more feasible); Alchemy, Enchantment, Astral Powers and World & Culture.

• Alchemy will include tincture production, brews, cures, skill enhancement potions, drugs and poisons. Offensive and defensive capabilites, as well as help when getting rare/powerful ingredients (for example, when making exploding tinctures and weapons you will need a Boom Organ (from Boomrat or Boomalope), but to be able to harvest that organ you first need to put said animal to sleep. Having a tame animal is of course much easier... An interesting side effects of this organ harvest is that the animal will no longer explode on death, which is a prefered property for a tame animal)
• Enchantment will be all about enhancing weapons and apparel with powerful effects, as well as production of staffs and wands (enabling Astral Powers to pawns that can't use Astral Powers by default). This will also enable crafting of art items that gives mental boosts to your fellow tribe people, or mental disabilites to your enemies. Adding protective markers and fear inducing totems.
• Astral Powers is the knowledge to draw power from the Astral plane. It will include but is not limited to; offensive spells, defensive spells, summoning of temporary allies from the Astral Plane, diseases and cures, possesion, soul gathering procedure, terrain deformation... This is a skill and knowledge that pawns are either born with or not. Making it a rare and powerful ability.
• World & Culture will add factions, events, unique creatues, mythical artifacts, religions(?), lore and hopefully make the world more living and fantastical by using the newly introduced quest system.

Work has begun on Alchemy. Atm i'm mostly focused on functions in dll assemblies and trying out various effects that can be achieved. How about an exploding tincture that summons a horde of manhunting rats with infectios plague, that should make the raids a bit more interesting? Or an exploding tincture that spawns a field of thorned vines, be careful though, the vines spread and can turn into a problem for your colony if taken care of properly. Or how about a field of psychotropic fungi that infect pawn that move through it with hallucinogenic spores, driving them mad. The ideas are plenty...

If you find this idea interesting and would like to contribute, let me know. I'm looking for collaborators.
I'm an artist by trade, have intermediate programming skills but only a couple of days of experience modding Rimworld. So more advanced modders and programmers would be nice, but also people with ideas and experienced Rimworld players, people knowing what they are missing in Rimworld and what they would like to see. This post will of course be open for suggestions from the community. Also i will probably open up a discord chat for people of interest in the progress of the mod, and a platform for testers and contributors.

Stay safe out there, the world is not what it seems.
/Distman

[Distman]

Sometimes when trying out different effects with vanilla hediffs you get... interesting results.
I made a field of pregnancy, which how ever strange it may sound, impregnated everyone that walked through it. IN THE LUNGS. Yup, that magical pregnancy was airborne. 5 minutes later the colony had doubled, introducing 3 newborn, fullsize humans. FYI, the vanilla game has hediffs for pregnancy that works even on colonists.

I can vision it now: The cannibal raiders of The Crimson Desert got a tad bit confused as they attacked the player colony and suddenly starting giving birth left and right to baby cannibal raiders, from their lungs. Xenomorphs anyone?

Well, maybe it's not that useful or even realistic, but hey, it sure is fun trying shit out.

[Distman]

Discord server here:
https://discord.gg/aYqPCaE

[Distman]

After a week of testing and trying out different concepts in code i've taken a step back and are focusing of planning, design and research of the Alchemy part. While many aspects comes from historical alchemy, i only use it as a source of inspiration, adding more and changing it to make something unique and inline with Rimworld lore (not that we have much, but you get me). I'm mixing several styles of historical traditions of altering power in life and matter; european alchemy, Voodoo, Wiccan paganism, occultism and Shamanism. Hopefully makes it a bit more timeless, fit for tribals and advanced settlers of the Rimworld alike, and inbetween if you are playing with a medieval setting. The aim is not to make a colony of Gandalfs, the aim is to add gritty shamanism with potent tinctures, brews, tonics and remedies. Expand your tribesmen by the power of Alchemy.

As it looks now (with subject to change):

• Introduction of 15 new plant species. Some cultivated, some growing in the wild, and some that only spawn when the planets are aligned and the deities are content. Adding to that; there will be a couple of plants that can only be spawned through powerful potions.
• Expansion of many vanilla items (i.e corpses, body parts, vanilla plants, leather etc), to be included as part of recipes or part of ingredient production.
• Tincture production system, which takes inpiration from the brewing barrel. Making many alchemy recipes and production methods timeconsuming and/or expensive. Invest your time & work and you shall be rewarded.
• Natural balancing features. Most brews and tonics won't be without it's side effects and dangers. Addiction and hangover will be common side effects. But also overdosing and... death. Don't you go chug those healing potions!
• Potency system. Many potions will use a potency system that boosts or lowers it's effects. Range, duration, effect strength, added effects etc. Possibility of including side effects for a poorly made potion as well.
• Essence Power system. Alchemy ingredients will be naturally infused with powers from one or several Essence categories. Each Essence power in every ingredient can range from weak to strong, so you need to have more or less ingredients when making a particlular brew. More about Essences at a later date...
• Adding a couple of extra production tables. Not a lot, i don't like clutter. But a few. Some bills will be done on already present tables.

I will keep you updated on the progress.

Head on over to my discord server (link above) if you want to drop suggestions, share your knowledge or skills in the making of this mod. Help much appreciated.
/Distman

[Distman]

This is what i'm working on at the moment:

Potions are both ingestible and throwable (grenade type). Might sound strange for a Toxic Tincture to be drinkable by your own colonists. But i want to deliver a sandbox experience. Heck, even sipping on a Sleep Tincture might be good for that colonist with sudden bad temper. If your colonists can drink them, so can your prisoners. Which means you can administer it to them. Be as experimental as you wish. Everything to please the gods of the void. 

Every potion has a potency, based on crafting skill and health/durability of item. This affects drug/poison severity and radius of grenade explosions.

The following effects are done so far:

• Sleep - Pawns go from tired to knocked out. But watch out for overdosing; can lead to coma and death.
• Berserk - Pawns starts fighting like there's no tomorrow. Especially fun in groups!
• Confusion - Pawns starts forgetting what they are doing. Can trigger mental state Wander Confused. But can also lead to permanent damage; demenita.
• Toxic - Poison seeps through the pawns veins. Can lead to death, obviously.
• Slow - Several stages slow down pawns until they are paralyzed. Chance for brain damage at high doses.
• Blind - Pawns goes from blurry vision to blind as a bat. Leaves a temporary blurred state after main effect is gone. Could possibly lead to permanent blindness if not careful(?)
• Fear - Pawns goes through various stages of fear. Affects mood. Can (and probably will) trigger the mental state Flee, which makes the pawn flee the area, never to return. So watch your colonists!
• Chill - Freeze your enemies until hypothermia strikes! Slows them down a bit as well, because why not.
• Fire Obsession - The pawns feel a deep urge to set things on fire. Triggers fire starting spree. Blood starts pumping as a side effect.

ATM i'm working on a healing tincture. Heals amount of wounds based on potency of the tincture. Beware for side effects, such as addiction and hang over!

I have some more ideas.. but i'll share that at a later date.

Also, this should probably be moved to the Mods/Unfinished board. Mod please?

[Distman]

new additions:

• Worker's Dream - Boost to global work speed, move speed, comfortable temperature, construction speed and success.
• Miner's Delight - Boost to mining speed and yield, slight boost to mental threshold
• Clarity - Boosts research speed and mental threshold, move speed decreased, side effect: sometimes forget what he/she's doing.
• Shepard's Aura - Animal gather speed (shearing, milking), animal gather yieald, tame schance and train chance.
• Warrior's Catalyst - Increased melee hit chance, faster aiming, better aim, mental break threshold increased, buffed defence for sharp and blunt, increased move speed and decreased workspeed.
• Herbal Soul - Increased planting speed and harvest yield.

Suggestions are also welcome! What would you like to see?

[Distman]

New additions:

• Healing Tincture - Heals 2 * tincture potency (0.5 - 4) wounds, extra effect: alcohol high + hangover. Addictive.
• Silver Tongue - increases prisoner recruit chance, trade bargaining, social impact. Hangover: increased social fight chance, lower mood

[Distman]

First video of a few tinctures in action:
https://youtu.be/pFoxJSjTja4

Also my first video recording ever, and first Youtube. Yay!

[The-Eroks]

This is very interesting! I'm working on a fantasy total conversion and was planning on including alchemy/potion brewing with a similar implementation. I'll be watching this closely 

[Distman]

Thanks dude, for checking it out!

What features will you have in your fantasy mod?

This is very interesting! I'm working on a fantasy total conversion and was planning on including alchemy/potion brewing with a similar implementation. I'll be watching this closely 

[shark510]

this mod sounds great and have good potential 

[Distman]

Thanks shark510!

Here's a video of todays work:
A parasitic disease, that gradually builds up, when the pawn dies it spawns a bunch of plague ridden manhunter rats in a bloody explosion. This is still wip, in the end the rats will be replaced with a custom creature. And the disease will probably be applied in the form of a throwable tincture. Let's see them raiders dance!

https://youtu.be/dckUXP7Vw98

[AngleWyrm]

Natural balancing features. Most brews and tonics won't be without it's side effects and dangers. Addiction and hangover will be common side effects. But also overdosing and... death. Don't you go chug those healing potions!

Is that going to be an adjustable property in the xml files, or hard-coded as a developer decision?

[The-Eroks]

What features will you have in your fantasy mod?

The long term goal is to do a fantasy total conversion that brings the game as close to DnD 3.5/my custom EDnD rule set as possible. In the short term, (a) I created a ~250 item technology tree inspired by Caveman-to-Cosmos/Fall From Heaven and am working to populate it with appropriately themed content, (b) am trying to expand the animals/pawns/biomes toward a more fantasy-feel, and (c) make some minor tweaks/additions to make the pawns/factions more fantasy-based. In short, working on creating a solid baseline before diving to far into magic and character class features.

Haha, my methods and progress have been best described (politely) as ad-hoc. 

[Distman]

Most of those things will be adjustable in xml. But feedback on balancing will be much appriciated. I don't want the mod to feel unusable.

Natural balancing features. Most brews and tonics won't be without it's side effects and dangers. Addiction and hangover will be common side effects. But also overdosing and... death. Don't you go chug those healing potions!

Is that going to be an adjustable property in the xml files, or hard-coded as a developer decision?