Conquest of Elysium 5

Conquest of Elysium 5

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Dragonic Merchant Class: Scaling Profit and Power!
   
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12 Mar, 2024 @ 7:23am
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Dragonic Merchant Class: Scaling Profit and Power!

Description
This mod adds a new class, the Dragonic Merchant, compatible with any mod!
This is a challenging class to play early on, since it takes a while to setup an economy and unlock all the costly powerspikes. Here are both the Cons (bad news first!) and Pros (best for last!) of the class:

CONS:

>EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE rituals
These prices make inflation look like a joke! It'll take a long while to be able to afford them, but power (and profit!) has its costs.

>Very few summons
Two of which insanely expensive. The sacred troop is extremely weak (but very reliable!), so you are basically stuck with basic recruits until you can summon more or switch to better units.

>Safe Capital, unsafe property!
Your Crystal protects your capital very well against random invaders, but it is immobile! Since you can gather every resource, you'll have tons of tiles you need to protect, and slow and expensive ways to do so.

>Narrow Magic Paths
You have access to Sidhe and Witchery, the former for buffing your troops and the latter for debuffing opponents. That's it, so you better look out for those wizard mercenaries to diversify against opponents.

PROS

>Can gather every resource
The world is your oyster, and all its riches are yours to invest or sell as you see fit! The class mainly uses huge amounts of Gold and Gems (and some iron), but it also has rituals using every kind of resource out there, so everything is useful!

>Economy rituals
Found citadels that count as mines literally in any tile! Enchant them with no restrictions for gem profit! Your main commander and your Hoard Statues come both with random and unique-to-this-class artifacts to enhance your units as you like (each one also improves your economy!).

>Infinitely scaling bless
Your home citadel has a powerful Crystal to protect it early on. This crystal is your only unit that can learn the Blessing of the Hoard, a ritual that gives both a darkbless and a holybless. Once used up, you can perform a ritual of mastery and repeat the process forever! (or as long as the game allows anyway)

>Charm access and Wizard Mercenaries
Sidhe and Witchery have a spell in common: Charm! It's true that your troop lineup is non-existent, but with a large investment in additional merchants you can "hire" enemy troops to bolster your ranks!
Not to mention that, like the Senator, you'll have more Wizard Mercenaries to recruit, to diversify your combat magic possibilities.

>You can become an IMMORTAL DRAGON
Opulent chinese statues in your image, dragonic merchants serving your ever-growing Hoard, a giant Crystal as your Phylactery... and you are the Dragon that owns this all.


Thanks to the Lords of the Crystal mod for the Crystal sprite (the rest comes from Illwinter games!), and thank you if you decide to give this class a go!
13 Comments
Playforfun 11 Jun, 2024 @ 9:29am 
Blessing only goes up to 50 times, after that, you can still cast them, but there are no additional effects. I suspect that's a hard cap in the base game.
Steve 6 Apr, 2024 @ 10:37pm 
This mod made my friend cry :'(
forrestomintero 30 Mar, 2024 @ 5:40pm 
also one other issue is that while I appreciate the ability to both tunnel and passwall, the game system doesn't handle that combo well. If you passwall down, any movement you make after that counts as tunneling, meaning you can't passwall or tunnel back up. Essentially this means you can strand your merchant underground/in inferno, and ultimately you can't benefit from the value of the passwall ability.
Master Crafter 30 Mar, 2024 @ 1:23pm 
I'm going to echo some of forrestomintero's sentiments, the rituals are very expensive and the experience was a slow grind.
Recommendations:
On paper having access to all the different types of resources sounds cool, but in practice you can't sell all of them so they just pile up. You could set up new units/rituals that use up a resource and give you another in exchange - or increase trade, but that would add more tedium and micromanaging. Abstracting to herbs, weed or fungus; and gems for a total of four diff. resources should suffice.
Consider reducing the cost of the expensive rituals.
Variation on hiring offers would be interesting.
Getting different recruitment options would add more interesting choices.
Bugs/Issues
If playing with AI that have the same class the player does not get the Crystal of Evergrowth.
If the Draconic Merchant dies early on it is difficult I am not sure you get a recruitment offer again to bring him back? Could be that it's a very low chance.
forrestomintero 23 Mar, 2024 @ 10:03pm 
The only native way to gain life force I've found is to do one of the rituals that evolve your dragon merchant. I haven't managed to collect enough gold for the ultimate evolution so idk about that one, but the one that turns you into a statue gives you 1 life force per turn. So for 5k gold (counting the summoning cost of a new merchant) plus assorted other resources you can improve your bless once every 50 turns
forrestomintero 22 Mar, 2024 @ 11:27pm 
I'm not against this class, it just needs a few more ways to stay competitive in the early game when the ai is running roughshod over the generic human recruits, and maybe the bless shouldn't be tied to life force because the process to unlock even a single point of income takes ages
forrestomintero 22 Mar, 2024 @ 11:23pm 
this class sounds great in theory but the upsides are mostly gated behind massive grinds. The much-touted infinite bless costs 50 life force per cast. Unfortunately you have no way to generate life force natively until you perform one of the overwhelmingly expensive rituals that evolve your main character. Once you do perform an evolution ritual you generate 1 life force per turn. So it takes 50 turns to generate enough life force to improve your blessings once. There also aren't that many rituals, and there's not really a good use for most of your resources. my current run herbs are measured in the tens of thousands.

Basically the main values of this class are their ability to turtle and very slowly bootstrap their economy. The only pure upside is that you have access to almost every plane because your main mage can fly, swim, tunnel, and passwall. (the sacred can fly and swim but can't passwall so you have to summon more if you go underground without tunneling)
Kazeck 22 Mar, 2024 @ 10:52pm 
I also want to know how to acquire life-force...steal a pyramid from a scourge I guess?
It'd probably be a good idea to give the class the pyramid of power ritual.
jarpe 20 Mar, 2024 @ 1:13am 
What do you mean single commanders. When you have more than 10 it isnt nice to always buy skills again and again.
Smisli 17 Mar, 2024 @ 11:25am 
@jarpe

I disagree, this makes it more interesting, important and challenging to protect your single commanders.