IDEA: "Special Powders"

NOTICE: This post is a bit rushed. It's mostly just me spewing out badly worded ideas. Feel free to suggest things, ask questions, correct stuff, whatever. I'll probably update it or make a follow up thats more concise and improved later. This is also like my first actual forum thread and suggestion, so like... go easy on me Also, this idea could have been suggested before, I have no idea.

I think it’s pretty reasonable to say that the same 4 spells get boring. So, here to you today, I would like to propose a new way to add cool abilities to wynncraft without adding in some way of swapping out your spells with different spells or anything like that:

“Special/Mystical” Powders.

The basic concept is that there are these very special powders and when you put one on an item it gives the item a special powder.. special. These specials would act as almost mini-spells that you can put on to an weapon, or almost major-id like perks you can put on armor - small unique abilities that are kind of like spells but not. I know I pretty much just described the normal elemental powder specials, but these abilities wouldn't be bound by specific elements. Sure, some may be associated with the five elements, but for the most part, they wouldn't have much correlation. Special powders also don't have multiple effects whether you put them on armor or weapons, each special powder is only for either armor or weapons. Maybe the weapon specials would cost mana; maybe they would work like normal powder specials that have to charge up.
I think this idea would add a lot of variety to play styles, because while the normal elemental powder specials are really cool and useful, i think having them confined to just the elements is a little limiting. It lets players have new and cool abilities while still keeping the core 4 spells that classes are confined to.

Special powders would not have tiers like normal powders, and ideally if they had to have tiers, there wouldn't be multiple tiers of the same powder, and tiers would be a ranking for how powerful the powder was (like how there are Unique/Rare/Legendary items)


The abilities these powders would give would be relatively simple yet still decently powerful. Some of my ideas include:

Spoiler: Ideas for abilities..

WEAPON POWDER ABILITIES:

Ward. Enemies in front of the player are pushed back and they take a small amount of damage.

Eldritch Blast. The player sends out a beam of energy. Mobs hit by the energy are rapidly damaged over a short amount of time and get stunlocked.

Sentry. For 3 seconds, all damage the player deals is increased by 200% and their attack speed is greatly buffed, but they can’t move.

ARMOR POWDER ABILITIES:

Mage Armor. Mana steal has a small chance to proc upon taking damage.

Cozy. Health regen is doubled when there are no mobs in a 20-block radius.

Panic. Walk speed is increased based on how much health you have. +0% for full health, +100% walk speed if you have like 2 health.

There could also be some class-specific specials:

Detonate (Shaman). All totems explode and are destroyed. The explosion is incredibly large and deals a lot of damage.

Arrow Volley (Archer). Shoots out a massive amount of arrows all at once - about like triple the quantity of Arrow Storm, but all at once. However, to balance it a little bit, the player would not be able to fire any more arrows for 2 seconds afterwards.

Sneak Attack (Assassin). Can only be used while vanishing. Similar to Multiattack but all the attacks basically happen at once in one super-mega-strike. Very slowly passively charges up while vanished.

Prestidigitation (Wizard). A colorful swirl of particles appears around the player. The player gains a substantial amount of mana regen over the next 3 seconds.

Totally honest; I can’t think of one for Warrior. If you have any ideas i’d be glad to hear em.

How would the player get/apply/use these powders?

…Is a question you probably weren’t asking. But, in case you were, there are two ways that i have thought up.:

1. The player can get special powders as mob/dungeon/chest loot. Some of them drop specific unique powders (ex. Infested Pit giving you a powder that has a web-spell-like ability)
   
   
2. The Transmutation Station!!! (insert like a cool sound or something here i don't know man)

The Transmutation Station would be a way to convert normal elemental powders into special powders. It would be separate from the normal elementalpowder combiner. I have 3 different possible ideas for ways it could work:

Spoiler: Transmutation Station Ideas...

Method 1: Specific Recipes
This would involve every special powder having its own recipe assigned to it. This would require that you manually assign each special powder a recipe, which could take a long time.


Method 2: Semi-Random
In my opinion, this is the more fun way, and also the most difficult to explain. It would work similarly to how Tainted Cain’s Bag of Crafting works in The Binding of Isaac, where the recipes are randomized but can be influenced by what you put in. Putting in air powders would increase your chance of getting certain special powders, and putting in fire powders would increase the chance of getting other certain special powders. There could also be some set recipes, like if you put in nothing but t4 air powders you get like a super special windstorm air powder or something.


Method 3: Totally Random
Simple: You put powders in, get a random special powder. Maybe the tier and quantity of powders you put in could affect how good the special powder is.

To apply special powders, you apply them like any other elemental powder. You can only have one special powder on an item at a time, and can't stack them. They also override the normal elemental powder specials.

Conclusion

I think this is a pretty decent idea in my opinion, although I'm the one who wrote it so i'm obviously super biased, it could honestly be total dogshit idk. I know the lore in the powder manual states that there are five powders based off of the elements, but afaik the powder manual doesn't have any real significance lore-wise.

Thanks for coming to my awful and stupid TEDWYNN Talk.

 

Mmmm I like this one. I like this one a lot as a hyperglass (ETW/A) enjoyer (and ETA). It seems rather too similar to Freerunner - there's literaly an item called Panic Attack - but it'd be awfully nice to not have to sacrifice damage for walk speed (e.g slapping Delirium).

Too similar to Wind Prison (I'm all for a wind prison rework regardless so in that case it's fine - another suggestion could be allowing the player to use Push spell like some mobs do).

Never going to happen but I find the idea of the player sending out this colossal beam amusing.

Any Giants Broadsword enjoyers from Mineplex Clans???

Busted

I see the appeal - there's far too many people who complain about -hpr in builds using the classic "but what about when I'm AFK" excuse. To me this is pointless and redudant because it won't help in combat.

Yep. I am a totem detonator/lobber supporter but I wouldn't see this as a powder special but rather a major ID or spell replacement if spell trees were to be added.

Don't like this one. Also seems redundant.

Not a powder special but I'd like to see warrior be able to use some kind of short temporary shield spell which strongly negates damage and even knockback (but not debuffs like slowness casts).

Honestly there are some neat ideas in here amongst some bad ones.

 

Thanks for thinking that any of my ideas are remotely good, and thanks for the feedback! I might update the post later with some extra ideas because some of the original ones were, in retrospect, super lackluster.

tl:dr thansk

 

as blue said above, i'd be all in to see this as a Major ID, replacing Aura

 

ngl some pretty cool ideas. IMO it would be neat to see powder specials get a revamp/update since they are getting out of date with the effects and how weapons/builds work (chain lighting, quake, courage is still good dont @ me)