Missing Damage Bonus

[Lucidus]

As I was upgrading my gear in preparation for the endgame, I noticed that the stats for my spellcaster do not show the +4 bonus to magical damage that he should get from having level 4 Magic skills. His base level is 3 (the same as the other members of my party), and he gets an additional +12 from items and runes, so I think the total bonus should be +19, but the character screen only shows +15. The physical damage bonuses appear correct for all my party members, so I don't think I am misunderstanding the math. Is anyone else experiencing this? I thought I should check before I send it to Jeff.

Edited November 24, 2019 by Lucidus

[Ess-Eschas]

Hello Lucidus,

 

You're not noticing the bonus to damage arising from the top tier of magical skills because, perhaps counter-intuitively, it's not shown as that sort of bonus to magical damage!

 

It's a core bonus applied directly to your characters, although it's not listed as such. The easiest way to spot this is to go to a fort. Look at your character with the top tier of magical skills, and make a note of the amount of damage they do when wielding a weapon that does magical damage. Now, untrain all of the skills they have learned in the top tier, and look at the values again. You'll see that the amount of damage done by the weapon has dropped by a flat amount, that is, the upper and lower limits have both dropped by the same amount.

 

You'll see exactly the same thing with the bonus to physical damage from physical skills. Both work in the same way, and as intended.

 

Curiously though, the amount either skill increases isn't actually 4, as it should be, but 3. That looks like a slight bug that's slipped through the net. You're only being shortchanged by a single point, so it's not a huge loss – that's probably why this hasn't been spotted before now. I'll report that in.

 

I'm not sure if the lack of the listing as a damage bonus is deliberate or not. Still, I'll pass it on – it does seem potentially confusing as things currently stand!

[mikeprichard]

Just been lurking the boards on and off waiting for the next patch to drop soon, and wanted to say a big "thank you" to everyone for reporting issues, and to folks like Randomizer and Ess-Eschass who take the initiative to answer and inform Jeff of things needing to be fixed. I love Jeff's games, but clear UI/game mechanics feedback has never been his focus, so I hope he does clarify the in-game text here to avoid further confusion.

[Lucidus]

I appreciate your explaining this. I didn't anticipate that the two damage bonuses would be handled differently, since the descriptive language is the same. I thought I had checked the physical damage bonus for comparison, but now that I go back and take another look, I was obviously mistaken.

I notice that in the discussion of skills and damage over at Strategy Central, they still refer to it as a +2 bonus, so some of the details must have changed in the latest version of the game.

I am always impressed by, and appreciative of, the Spiderweb forums, populated as they are by helpful, well-spoken people. Thanks for your assistance.

[Lucidus]

A couple of other minor details regarding the damage bonuses: for my fully levelled-up party, the base damage bonuses were +4 for physical, and +3 for magical, damage. This was what I expected, based on the fact that I had built 7 barracks. However, when I removed a barracks building, the bonus remained.

To explore this further, I checked with a lower level party. When I built my first barracks, all my party members gained 1 point physical damage. When I built the second barracks, nothing changed on the character screen. When I built the third barracks, my characters now had +2 physical and +1 magical damage bonuses. I'm not sure why the delay before the magical bonus appeared, but that's minor. Once again, the bonuses remained if I removed the buildings.

I don't know if this is significant enough to be considered a bug, but I will report it.

[Lucidus]

Jeff informs me that after removing a barracks, the damage bonus from that building persists until the end of the current two-day resource gathering period. I have not had a chance to observe this myself.

Sorry to burrow so deep into the minutiae; I know this is the exact opposite of how he wants this game to be experienced.

[Ess-Eschas]

Excellent. Thank you for letting us know! I did a quick check, and the damage bonus does indeed expire when the next round of resources comes in.

 

And don’t feel like you need to apologise! You’ve already dug up a bug and an area of confusion in the game engine, and those are really useful things to have been brought to Jeff’s attention. It will make the next version of the game even better!

 

Also, I wouldn’t worry too much about Jeff’s ‘preferred’ way of playing any particular game. While I’m sure he has opinions, he’s said many times that he’s very happy for people to play his games however they want to. If you want to go ahead and burrow into minutiae, then by all means do so! There are plenty of people here on these forums who share that interest, and would be happy to discuss those matters with you!

[Lucidus]

Curiouser and curiouser. My original party, which was started while I was running V1.0.1, shows the damage bonus as +4 in the training window (although the actual difference, as seen on the equipment screen, is +3, as you noted). My newer party, started after I had upgraded to V1.0.2, correctly shows it as +3. To add to the fun, the training window on page 9 of the instruction manual shows it as +2. Apparently, this is something that has been repeatedly tweaked between versions.

[Lucidus]

For the latest, correct information about damage bonuses, see this post:

 

http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/25289-skill-tree-damage-bonuses-setting-the-record-straight/