# Heretic Knowledge Rework

# Abstract

This is a pitch to rework the Heretic antagonist to make it easier to interact as and against for the average TG player.

To accomplish this, the cross-pathing system will be removed in exchange for a draft system; paths will be made slightly more independant, each path will receive their own specific robe set, and lastly the ability to blade break for a free escape will be removed once the Heretic reaches the end of their path.

# Why the Cross-Pathing System is Problematic

Knowledge Cross-Pathing has been an integral part of Heretic since its inception.

At the time we only had 3-4 paths and only a handful of side knowledges, and conceptually planning what knowledges you may or may not have access to could be fun.

Fast forward to 5 years later, we now have 8 paths, 22 side knowledges (not counting the free ones) and 80 main knowledges, which creates so many design problems that only exacerbate with every contribution to the antagonist.

**1) Creates paralysis of choice and overcomplicates the antagonist:** Heretic is already, by design, more difficult to play than pretty much every other antagonist we have in the game; compared to traitors and changelings, they are total pushovers until they accrue a sizeable amount of knowledge.

Now add just how utterly confusing the tree-based system is and having to plan your progression around hundreds of knowledges scattered around 16 columns and 8 rows, and it's no surprise we have a lot of players that don't even bother to learn how to play Heretic.

**2) It makes fighting a heretic an incomprehensible nightmare for the crew:** Likewise, having access to a potentially infinite amount of knowledge results in the crew being unable to keep track of what an individual heretic is capable of doing.

**3) Makes it virtually impossible to balance paths:** Each Heretic path is balanced around specific strenghts and weaknesses (or at least the ones I worked on), just to make one example.

Rust is very resilient and has great staying power but is also very overt and lacks mobility.

Void is the opposite; sneaky and mobile but also quite frail and has no access to sustain.

The issue with this design philosophy is that it falls apart as soon as a heretic accrues enough knowledge; they can compensate for whatever weaknesses they have by design just by siding into another path.

**4) Encourages heretics to brute force their way to ascension:** with a few exceptions, main knowledge abilities only exist to make the heretic better at fighting.

As a result, curses, paintings, crucible potions, and the lionhunter rifle are pretty much never used.

Partly because a few interesting combos are just not viable due to the specific positioning of side knowledges in the tree , i.e., the lionhunter rifle, a gun that shoot through walls, would work great with the ashen medallion (Thermal Vision), but they are 8 columns apart and therefore never used together.

And partly because they require setup and are overall less efficient than just walking up to your target and unleashing 2 action bars worth of spells on their face.

**5) Make new paths easier to be added:** To quote Jacquerel "It should be possible to add things to Heretic without creating a 16,000 line Pull Request which nobody wants to review."".

# Why I am taking Blade Breaking away (in the later stages of a round).

Blade breaking is arguably the best escape tool we have in the game.

it's easy to perform, relatively fool proof and there isn't any hard limit in place for how many times it can reproduced.

Now, this mechanic exists for a reason; Heretics, even with my changes, are very weak in the early stages of a round and often hunted on sight by the crew. Combine that with most fights ending in only a few attacks, and it's no wonder why teleportation is such a common tool that we keep on granting to most of our antagonists.

The same reasoning however cannot be applied once a Heretic reaches the end of their knowledge tree.

By that point, most paths already have a jaunt, or are capable of withstanding multiple hits.

This can lead into situations where a late game heretic can feel pretty much impossible to pin down.

With how much stronger heretics have gotten over the last year, (specifically the paths I've personally worked on) I feel confident in taking this option away once Heretics have reached the peak of their power.

# Goals

1) Lower the skill floor/cap on Heretic.

2) Cap the maximum power level a heretic can reach by disabling the cross-pathing system.

3) Make paths feel more unique by improving individual knowldges and granting them passive abilities and a unique armor set.

4) Open up side knowledges so that they can be accessed by reaching a row rather than by their proximity to a specific path.

5) Encourage heretics to use more lateral thinking in accomplishing their goals by having them rely on side knowledges instead of direct combat prowess.

6) Make it a bit easier for the crew to respond or understand what each Heretic Path is capable of.

7) Limit the amount of jaunts or teleports an heretic has access too.

8) Make it more clear for the crew when a heretic has reached a level of power that warrants action.

# Non-goals

1) Remove progression from the antagonist or weaken/remove ascensions.

2) Make Ascension drastically more common.

3) Drastically alter how strong Heretics are towards the end of a round.

# General changes

- Upon selecting a path, you will immediately receive the blade ritual, the grasp, and the mark upgrades.

- To compensate for the early power spike, main path spells have had their cost increased from 1 to 2 knowledge points save for the first one.

- Armorer's ritual and the final blade upgrade will cost 1 knowledge point.

- For every Main Knowledge unlocked, the heretic gets to choose between a draft of 3 random side knowledges, this is a free point

- New tab that functions as a "Knowledge Shop", allows the Heretic to unlock a side/main knowledge of their choice at an increased price(Lock Heretics get a discount).

- Heretics will now gain X-ray vision for a few seconds when nearby an eldritch essence.

- The maximum number of possible sacrifices required to ascend has been reduced from 6 to 5 while the minimum has been upped to 4.

- Selecting a path grants you a passive ability that gets stronger as they accrue knowledge.

- Ritual of knowledge requirements have been lessened a smidge.

- **Upon crafting their set of robes or reaching 8 knowledge points, the limit on Blades will be removed and the teleport on Blade Breaking disabled.**

- **Losing blade break will also surround the heretic with a special aura, this serves a similar purpose to cult halos, to warn the crew that the player is a heretic (Lock path doesn't get it however).

- **Heretics that reject ascensin won't get the aura**

- **Latejoin Heretic will be removed.**

# Drafting System.

- Every time the heretic makes progress towards the main path, they are given a choice between one of a draft of 3 randomized side knowledges(these are granted for free).

- Each path has at least a couple of guaranteed side knowledges (Rust Will always get the Rust-Sower Grenade,Blade will always gain access to the no-slip boots and so on).

- As you go down the tree, you have an increased chance for fishing for a main knowledge spell.

- A new tab will be introduced that acts as "Knowledge shop", here you can buy every knowledge in the pool, side will cost 2 and main 3(as mentioned previously, Lock heretics get them for 1 point cheaper).

- Not every knowledge will be immediately available for purchase on the shop, different rows will be unlocked as you progress towards the main path, these are.

**Tier 0: Stealth and general utility:** Void Cloak, Ashen Eyes, Eldritch Flask, Phylactery of Damnation, Mawed Crucible (this is the only row that costs 1 point to unlock and available for purchase at the start of the game).

**Tier 1: Defensive tools and curses:** Codex Morbus, Greaves Of The Prophet, Wave Of Desperation, Carving Knife, Ether Of The Newborn, Eldritch Paintings.

**Tier 2 Summons:** Rust walkers, Maid in the mirrors, Ash walkers, Risen ghouls, and Fire sharks.

**Tier 3:Combat-related knowledge:** Apetra Vulnera, Space Phase, Unfathomable Curio, Rust Sower grenade.

**Tier 4: Main Knowledges(LOCK PATH ONLY):** Ashen Jaunt, Lunar Parade, Concierge's Rite, Flesh Surgery, Void Prison, Stance Of the Torn Champion, Entropic Plume, Cosmic Runes.

# How passives work.

Upon selecting a path, the Heretic will receive a passive ability that can be upgraded a couple of times.

You unlock these upgrades by completing a series of tasks, not by gaining knowledge.

**T2 Upgrade:** This can be obtained upon crafting a set of the path specific robes.

**T3 Upgrade:** Upon unlocking the T2 upgrade, the Heretic will be granted access to the Ritual of Knowledge; completing it nets you the final passive upgrade. Alternatively it will be granted upon ascending.

# Passive abilities per path

**Ash Passive/Vow Of Destruction:** :

- **T1**: High temp and Ash storm protection.

- **T2**: Lava protection.

- **T3** Pressure protection.

**Moon Passive/Do you Hear the voices too?:**

- **T1**: The Heretic cannot develop brain traumas except for special ones, passively regenerates brain health, (this bonus is halved in combat).

- **T2**: Sleep immunity, increases the ratio at which your brain damage regenerates.

- **T3**: Applies the effects of moon amulet to the spells (If you target someone with low enough sanity they go nuts and start attacking everyone.), increases brain damage regeneration.

**Lock Passive/Open Invitation:**

- **T1**: shock insulation, all knowledges researched from the shop are cheaper, access to the main knowledge tab in the shop.

- **T2**: Xray vision.

- **T3**: Grasp no longer goes on cooldown when used to open a door or locker.

**Flesh Passive/Ravenous Hunger:**

- **T1**: Immunity to Diseases, Disgust and space ants.

- **T2**: Eating organs or meat now heals you, gain the voracious and gluttonous trait and being fat doesn't slow you down.

- **T3**: gain a flat 25% damage and stamina damage reduction when fat and baton resistance.

**Void Passive/Aristocrat's way:**

- **T1**: Cold and low pressure immunity.

- **T2**: No breathe.

- **T3**: water/ice no slips.

**Blade Passive/Dance of the Brand:**

- **T1**: Riposte with a 20 seconds cooldown, it now counts as a block

- **T2**: immunity to fall damage.

- **T3**: Cooldown of the riposte reduced to 10 seconds.

**Rust Passive/Leeching Walk:**

- **T1**: Standing on Rusted tiles heals and purge chems off your body, healing is +3 per damage type and stamina regen is at +15 per tick (Changed it to delta time).

- **T2**: Standing on Rusted tiles closes up your wounds and heals your organs, you may now rust reinforced floors and walls.

- **T3**: Standing on Rusted tiles regenerates your limbs, you may now rust titanium and plastitanium walls.

**Cosmic Passive/Chosen of the stars:**

- **T1**: Cosmic fields speed the heretic up and regenerate stamina (25% movement speed, 15 stamina regen per second).
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- **T2**: Cosmic fields disrupt grenades or signalers from being activated and turn off already primed grenades.

- **T3**: Cosmic fields slow projectiles down.

# Path specific robes.

- Armorer Ritual is no longer a side knowledge, each path will have their own unique version of the ritual,this is unlocked after the 2nd spell.

- Robes can no longer be destroyed by fire and acid,grant t4 flash protection (Moth Heretics stay winning) and protection against basic syringes, to bring em on par with other antagonists's armor sets.

- The recipe to craft the robes is still a table and a mask (any mask will do now not just gas masks) plus the unique reagent required for the blades (Plasma for Cosmic, Trash For Rust, match for Ash and so on)

**1) Ash Robes:** Grants fire protection, the armor gradually generates fire stacks on the heretic(this effect can be toggled on and off), casting an Ash spell while at maximum fire stacks, consumes the stacks and empowers it.

**Ashen Passage:** Now removes stuns, restraints and stamcrit.

**Volcano Blast:** removes the cast time, increases the amount of firestacks applied to victims.

5 laser and energy armor , 4 melee, 6 ballistic, full bomb and rad protection.

- **Reasoning:** Makes Ash path a little more volatile and grants an incentive to spread fire around.

**2) Moon Robes:** every time the heretic receives damage or stamina damage, the attack is nullified and converted into brain damage instead, it also blocks any form of CC or slowdowns from affecting you, It comes with some heavy downsides however, the robes itself have no armor, cannot be taken off unless your brain is at max health, prevents you from using guns, pacify you, and increase the overall damage received by the wearer by 15%.

- **Reasoning:** As you may have guessed from my changes to moon path, I'm turning the brain of the heretic into their resource, it's used to cast some spells and it's now effectively their health bar, this effectively turns Moon Heretic into a glass cannon, you are extremely hard to pin down or disable but the lack of armor means that eating too many hits in quick succession will basically end you.

**3) Lock Robes:** : Digital camouflage (you cannot be seen on cameras), silent footsteps and immune to examine.

Average protection all around.(4 of each)

- **Reasoning:** Path about breaking in and thievery could benefit from anonymity .

**4) Flesh Robes:** Grants the Heretic medhuds and an aura that slowly heals ghouls and summons.

Full Bio Protection. 7 melee , 4 ballistic , 3 laser and energy armor.

- **Reasoning:** Furthers pigeonholes Flesh into being the "minion master path", medhuds helps keep track on the status of your minions and which one to heal with flesh surgery, the aura is to encourage summons to stick close to their master.

**5) Void Robes:** Reactive stealth, when the heretic is hit they go invisible for a little bit,(but don't leave a clone behind.), this effect has a 40 seconds cooldown.

4 armor in everything except energy and lasers which are 5.

- **Reasoning:** a short stealth camo to allow the heretic to reposition themselves during combat.

**6) Blade Armor:** Resistance to batons and shock insulation resistant to tackles.

Same stats as the Eldritch armor on live (5 of each).

- **Reasoning:** With no access to jaunts or blade break, Blade is very much a do or die path. Baton resist is pretty much mandatory these days for any sort of melee focussed antagonist. The shock immunity meshes well with empowered blades, now that the heretic is capable of tearing airlocks apart.

**7) Rust Robes**: The armor values of the robe are doubled when the heretic is standing on Rusted tiles ,gain immunity to pierce and resistant tackles when empowered.

3 armor in everything, 5 bomb armor, the armor values are doubled when standing on Rust.

**Reasoning:** Rust is designed to be a territorial overt path, yet I still see too many Rust heretics be afraid to spread their domain or to even fight on rust to begin with, so as a solution i'm weakening the robes from 5 protection to 3 when on a neutral turf and increasing their strenght to 6 when standing on rusted ones.

**8) Cosmic Robes**: EVA proof, can toggle gravity on and off at will, (jetpacks are disabled while under this effect)

6 Lasers and energy armor, 3 ballistics, 2 melee, rad proof.

-**Reasoning:** Space path having space protection makes sense, so does having control over gravity.

# Main Knowledge changes

Since cross pathing has been removed, each path has been made a bit stronger to compensate for the loss of power.

# Ash

**Volcano Blast:** cast time reduced by 50%.

**Mask Of Madness:** now offers pepper spray protection and can be used to set up internals.

**Nightwatcher's Rebirth:** cooldown reduced, it now works on non-players.

# Moon

**Author Notes:** Moon has received a soft rework, The heretic brain now serves as a resource to cast spells and to mitigate damage (once the robes are equipped), equipping the moon amulet now changes how the blade operates, transforming into a non lethal weapon, the new kit has a stronger focus on disrupting and confusing your opponents, making the path hopefully more distinct than before.

**Moon Smile:** Replaced with **Mind's Gate**, the latter now combines both effects of the spells.

**Moonlight Amulet:** The amulet effect now channels through the Moon blade. The Moon blade will no longer do damage or cause wounds but inflict direct sanity damage and be unblockable. Hitting a converted target with a Moon blade will put them to sleep for 30 seconds, (This essentially makes Moon eligible to pacifist players.), it also doubles the brain regeneration gained from the passive ability.

**Ringleader's Rise:** Affected targets now hallucinate multiple copies of the Heretic. If an illusion is struck, it explodes and deals sanity and brain damage around it. (Discussed it with Rex, Currently this spell is just lame, it's an invisible aura of damage and nothing more.)

**The Last Act:** brain damage aura replaced with sanity decay, radius increased, non heretics who reach 0 sanity no longer go insane but are converted into lunatics. Players with mindshields or Blood Cultists have their brain explode instead, massively boosts the heretic brain regen.

# Lock (Sigh..)

**Lock Grasp:** invocation is now silent.

**Concierge's Rite:** Charges are restored over time and been upped to 5, walls now last up to 15 seconds, wall pushback increased.

# Flesh

After this PR gets merged I'm planning a full rework for this path, no changes until then.

# Void

**Void Conduit:** Health reduced from 300 to 150 hp, it's also been moved at the very bottom of the tree, airlock and window damage per pulse slightly increased.

**Void Prison:** It is now a main knowledge taking the spot of Aristocrat's way, Void chill stacks applied reduced from 3 to 1.

**Void Phase:** Void Chill stacks increased from 1 to 2, cooldown lowered from 25 to 20 seconds.

**Void Pull:** Radius increased by 1. Void Chill stacks increased from 1 to 3.

# Blade

**Stance Of the Torn Champion:** It's been re-added back, taking the spot of Dance of The Brand in the tree, it no longer provides baton resist below 50% HP, but damage slowdown immunity.

**Realignment**: Changed the time per tick to delta time.

**Empowered Blades**: If both blades are empowered, the second hit will also apply a mark, demolition modifer increased from 1.5 to 2.5.

**Furious Steel**: Fixed the bug that allowed a free refund when the blades block an attack, cooldown reduced to 30 seconds.

**Wolves Among Sheep:** Replaced the antag datum with a runechat text.

# Rust

**Turfs:** Pizza turfs, SAND turfs, Xeno turfs and circuit turfs (The ones in the ai chamber), are now affected by RUST_STRENGTH 2, SNOW turfs are now rustable on ascension.

**Rust Curse:** Now also affects bots and auggies, it now deals more damage against non organics.

**Rust Construction:** Cooldown reduced to 2 seconds.

**Rust Grasp:** Power now scales with RUST_STRENGTH and no longer leaves glass structures with 1 hp left, it also affects robotic limbs now.

**Entropic Plume:** Blind duration is now consistent, radius slightly increased.

**Rust Charge:** It's become a main knowledge and the last spell unlocked pre-ascension, it's been made more versatile with a bigger AOE upon connecting, at the cost of the stun being much shorter (from 5 to 2 seconds) and the damage being halved, it will now destroy everything in its path.

# Cosmic

**Author notes:** Cosmic has received the biggest batch of changes alongside Moon, It's the only heretic path that has been sitting at the last spot on superstats both for ascension and pickrate (less than 5%) for almost 2 years,It did pick in popularity over the last few months reaching the highest ascension rate in the game (12%).

Cosmic sits in a weird spot, where pretty much every knowledge surrounding the path is either mediocre or in the case of the ascension non functional, but mantained a smidge of relevancy due to how absurdly overpowered the speed sacrifice tech on Star touch is.

As a result, I figured the best course of action would be to rebalance the rest of the kit by granting the heretic more tools to manipulate space and dictate the flow of the fight, while lessening their ability to end a confrontation by instantly sleeping their opponents.

Oh and I gave the Star Gazer a giant death beam, so have fun with that!

**Star Mark:** The heretic can now drag star marked mobs through cosmic fields.

**Star Blast:** Reworked, the projectile no longer deals damage, is not consumed on impact and goes through walls, the heretic can recast the ability to teleport where the projectile currently is.

The turfs where the heretic teleports to and from generate a 3x3 of cosmic fields and release a mini shockwave that pulls targets towards the center.

Cooldown increased from 20 to 25 seconds, cosmic field duration lowered from 30 to 5 seconds.

**Cosmic Runes:** Non Heretics who use the portal now receive a star mark (Makes it a bit riskier to chase a Cosmic Heretic).

You can now teleport mobs you are dragging alongside with you.

Clicking on yourself while being on top of the rune will activate it.

**Star Touch:** it has now a range of 3 tiles ,and no longer immediately puts people to sleep, instead it makes them drowsy and unable to teleport, if the beam that connects the heretic and its victim is not broken for 8 seconds, the target falls asleep and is teleported underneath the heretic, the sleep duration has been upped to 8 seconds and the cosmic fields left by the victim also last longer.

**Cosmic Expansion:** Radius increased, cooldown reduced from 45 to 15 seconds.

**Blade Upgrade:** Your blade now applies star marks, you can now smack star marked targets from one tile further with your blade, organ damage has been removed.

**Ascension:** Requirement changed from 3 bodies with bluespace dust to 3 bodies with a star mark, the heretic gains full space protection, night and Xray vision.

**Star Gazer:** Is now a ghost role, no longer has the passive damage aura, both the heretic and the gazer gain full temp/pressure resistance, nightvision and x-ray vision.

The Star Gazer is now bomb immune, can now cast Star Blast, Cosmic Expansion and a new ability unique to them.

**Star Gaze:** roots the star gazer in place, after a delay, they conjure a massive laser that instantly destroys anything non organic and causes massive burn damage to everything caught in the stream, foes in critical condition are dusted, the laser gradually pulls mobs and objects closer to the stream.

# Changes to Existing Side Knowledges.

**Cleave/Apetra Vulnera and Blood Siphon are now merged into Crimson Cleave:** Works exactly like cleave but also heals the heretic for each target struck

**Mind Gate has been merged into Moon Smile:** Discussed it with Rex, these spells are already very similar, we can probably just merge them together to remove some bloat.

**Wave of Desperation:** No longer requires a focus to be cast, forced sleep reduced from 20 to 5 seconds.

**Codex Cicatrix:** Crafting no longer requires a special pen.

**Void Cloak** is now thermally insulated.

**Greaves Of The Prophet:** regular work boots are now a valid reagent for the recipe.

**Ash Walkers:** Recipe no longer requires a head, they now passively regenerate HP.

**Maid In The Mirrors:** recipe changed to 5 glass sheet instead of titanium, autoattacks now apply void chill, they are impervious to lasers and regenarate hp while in jaunt form.

**Eldritch Water:** Now has a chem purge effect and regulates body temp.

**Crucible Of Soul potion:** consuming the potion now applies an internal cooldown to avoid them being spammed repeatedly.

**Entropic Pulse:** Removed.