Shadow Magic items and Duellists

[ADM]

With the welcome change of the Dark Sword and Night Armor now no longer affecting Maxwell sanity regen, the other change that makes duellists' damages increase using them has made these 2 items absolute must equip for Maxwell. I think it's both good building such synergies but also bothering that it stops there with only his magic top hat and two items that are already so great by themselves: offering a lot of protection and damage output makes me want other items that are not so tip top do better than them for the magic damage increase of duellists.

So in short it's asking to have pretty much every shadow magic equipments contribute toward this effect to different amounts, some diversity in plays and styles. It seems to be something that was at least considered looking at the Shadow Thurible and I want to encourage this to even go further, it had its shadow_item_level commented to 3 (+10 dmg per point), being better than the Night Armor who has the best damage boost (2) but for the hands slot so with the sword level being only 1 you'd get an increment of about 20 damage for duellists while you don't have the weapon, still, you could try to fight while you can to benefit of the movement and attack speed it offer. Anyway, you could do whatever you want and I like having a choice for both and the Dark Sword and Night Armor would still be pretty damn good.

Outside of the Thurible there are a lot of shadow items and they should at least deserve a single point of shadow item level, even if it's not items that have hostile interactions with Gestalts, or like, add one, I think I'd be fine with and without.

This would be my personnel tier list per level for the different items, I'm mostly giving the big points to items that are really less effective in battles but with high nightmare potential in them :

1 LvL : Belt of Hunger, All Amulets and Staves*, Thulecite Crown and Suit, Dark Sword, Magician's Top Hat
* Except stuff like Moon Caller's Staff and Blue Gem ones who are free of Nightmare Fuel, anyway it's the tier where Dark Sword does better than those,
   but I especially really want this because I wear the Magilu a lot
   I'd also like to add the Bat Bat to there due to the synergy with Maxwell, sanity effect and purple gem in the craft but kinda want to respect nightmare fuel in the logic

2 LvL : Thulecite Club*, Bone Armor and Helm, Night Armor
* This weapon is still in need of love because of how goofy the tentacles work, it has an effect who fits Maxwell since you'll be less invited to have a cane equipped,
   so there's a minimum speedboost to grab there, and more summons.

3 LvL : One Man Band*, Shadow Thurible
* Ngl I just think that'd be very funny, and like the lvl 4 next one these are items that have ongoing draining durability made with Nightmare Fuel

4 LvL : Nightmare Amulet*
* cough

With this the total of points you can have equipped at once would be 9 (Bone Helm + Shadow Thurible + Nightmare Amulet), current was 4, that's a large difference but the type of items are much differents in obtention, fuel cost and what you'd do with them. Let's see what a summon type of build could do at its finest. /s

(Also with that I sure can tell a variety of tweaks might also be needed as for damages per points, speed or others like the max of duellists, nothing can be perfect in a first go, well aware of it, I just really want to try other options !)

[Arcwell]

Having options other than than dark sword + night armor + magic hat would be great.

I think the existing +10/+20/+10 damage bonus format should be retained across these new options though. 60 damage per duelist is already quite substantial, not being locked into one set of gear is a good enough change imo.

[Copyafriend]

1 hour ago, Arcwell said:

Having options other than than dark sword + night armor + magic hat would be great.

I think the existing +10/+20/+10 damage bonus format should be retained across these new options though. 60 damage per duelist is already quite substantial, not being locked into one set of gear is a good enough change imo.

Or alternatively the other options could be weaker than “pure shadow” equipment 

[Notecja]

I think we need that, simply to not be locked into one style and "only one true way" of maintaining fight. Just eventually I would consider idea of "more risky equipment = better outcome", for sort of glass cannon playstyle. While +90dmg  sounds insane, still can be tweaked in some way... not to mention these are not cheap items, unless someone kills FW every 10-20 days, but I would be scared to stand in front of such person.