Something I figured I'd set aside to tinker with and test over time, a new endgame item that serves as competition for the sacramental heart (much like how you're expected to choose between the cursed blade and restored ritual blade). In addition it'll also entail visiting both the sanguine ruins and the strange grove to obtain the stuff needed to craft it.
Focuses on a new item, the horned staff of life's bane. A relic designed to be an alternative application of the whole "summon an extradimensional beast and exploit its power" concept, to be implied by background snippets to be what the regular sects of the Sagnuine Order had in mind for what to do with the petrified heart.
Its focus is primarily on applications that synergize with "conventional" sanguinuist methods, a utility weapon whose on-hit buffs directly mitigate the effects of using the silver athame's ritual to generate blood essence, with the added benefit of debuffing what you hit with it. Its use action has a spellcasting effect that gives it a potent offensive option with the added benefit of ranged life-drain, reflecting the behavior of the cursed blade's life drain but with the twist of working like a beefed up version of the Keeper's gauntlet spell.
In addition, while likely to be specific to the BN version since DDA's relic recharge mechanics are more limiting, it has an added ability to negate dimensional fatigue and tindalos rifts, regaining some blood essence from the former. This gives it a distinct contrast to the restored ritual blade and, which can drain portals and gains a lot more energy in doing so but doesn't gain anything from draining dimensional fatigue (though if I changed its ammotype to regular essence it'd scale right to allow that, so hmm).
[X] Add item entry for horned staff of life's bane, including relevant relic data.
[X] Add on-hit and on-use spell effects.
[X] Add effect JSON for the protective buff granted by the spell's on-hit effect.
[X] Add the side effect JSON for the spell's life-drain secondary effects.
[X] Edit Strange Anemia buff to count the new effect as a resistance effect.
[X] Add recipe for the new item.
[X] Martial art injections where relevant.
[x] Add snippet entries to relevant note types to serve as a player nudge, and indicate that this idea was what some sanguinist sects in the Order had in mind, in competition with the Dragonblood sects.
[x] Edit Johnathan's first mission so that it's framed in a way that lets you keep the bane staff, with a conditional mission that also accepts. Reframed such that he won't go "dafuq bruh" when shown the lifesbane staff, on the basis of him not knowing entirely for sure what form the staff is supposed to take.
[X] Playtest the relevant mechanics and get a feel for if the item is actually worth giving up both access to post-thresh Dragonblood mechanics AND the bane staff (again, in theory but in practice unique locations aren't actually unique). So far seems aight, can't think of any other additions that compliment this idea.
Something I figured I'd set aside to tinker with and test over time, a new endgame item that serves as competition for the sacramental heart (much like how you're expected to choose between the cursed blade and restored ritual blade). In addition it'll also entail visiting both the sanguine ruins and the strange grove to obtain the stuff needed to craft it.
Focuses on a new item, the horned staff of life's bane. A relic designed to be an alternative application of the whole "summon an extradimensional beast and exploit its power" concept, to be implied by background snippets to be what the regular sects of the Sagnuine Order had in mind for what to do with the petrified heart.
Its focus is primarily on applications that synergize with "conventional" sanguinuist methods, a utility weapon whose on-hit buffs directly mitigate the effects of using the silver athame's ritual to generate blood essence, with the added benefit of debuffing what you hit with it. Its use action has a spellcasting effect that gives it a potent offensive option with the added benefit of ranged life-drain, reflecting the behavior of the cursed blade's life drain but with the twist of working like a beefed up version of the Keeper's gauntlet spell.
In addition, while likely to be specific to the BN version since DDA's relic recharge mechanics are more limiting, it has an added ability to negate dimensional fatigue and tindalos rifts, regaining some blood essence from the former. This gives it a distinct contrast to the restored ritual blade and, which can drain portals and gains a lot more energy in doing so but doesn't gain anything from draining dimensional fatigue (though if I changed its ammotype to regular essence it'd scale right to allow that, so hmm).