Zombasite More Mod!

[Destro*]

v2.0.3

* Nerfed NPC version of Shatter skill.
* Nerfed Frenzy ability on darc orc's.
* Reduced wand spell damage by 3.33. (Was missing a 0 after decimal position, which was causing it to be 10x higher than intended. I then scaled wand up to be worth 3 item slots of value, to incentivize using them.)
* Staves now require more stat points to use (25% more).
* Staves now have 2.5 item slots of spell damage in value.
* Staves now drop more rarely, around the same amount as rings/necks/jeweler and plate equipment.
* Weapons drop much more rarely overall relative to other item types, which will make armor drops more common.
* Item disappear times adjusted to better accommodate realistic quick-farming scenarios: Normal = 60 seconds, uncommon and common = 30 seconds, rare = 120 seconds, very rare = 240
* Mutant recruits no longer can spawn with the banned buffs. (Hardiness/True Aim, etc.)

As a small note, haven't gotten to DoT testing on might skills. But, that's next on the agenda when my Mage character hopefully dies soon!

[Destro*]

v2.0.4

* Fixed scaling on elite and higher difficulties to actually increase as intended.
* Teleport has been nerfed to have a 2 second cooldown. This makes it a lot less overpowered and makes it so you may want to use it strategically.
* Ball Lightning's Damage has been reduced to account for the fact that it can crit.
* Power has been shifted around on spells on more time. The higher end elemental spells had too much damage. I was using the wrong set of simulated data for them, which is why the numbers were so large. Woops. In any case, I nerfed them and then buffed spell damage because I had to nerf spell damage in the past because the numbers from the AoE spells were so high and to keep things balanced. This is the benefit of playtesting. So, yeah. This makes all of the non-super-high-end aoe spells stronger since spell damage is up to what I had originally intended in 2.0.

I had to do a few quick patches to fix up everything. But, 2.0.4 is now finally done. :>

[Exovi]

Thanks for the mod! I've been following it for awhile, but finally played through two worlds with it. The changes feel good, there are some nice QoL changes I noticed, but for the most part I couldn't pick out what was different from vanilla (haven't played in quite awhile).

However, I didn't see a single vendor in that entire time - is that intended?

If there is anything you want me to look out for during my playthrough (testing or feedback), let me know!


EDIT: Oh, I also noticed that one of my kicked clan members started his own clan, which was super neat - is that yours? That would be another value I'd like to change for myself, if you happen to know what the variable is. UPDATE: Found it! BanishedNpcStartCovenantChance in systems.

[Exovi]

Found the vendor changes, reverted them on personal preference.

While checking up to see what skills were affected by the various Arcane/Venom/Volcanic Might spells, I noticed a typo:

SkillVenomMight
{
	Base BaseSkillPassive
	BaseName	"Venom Might"
	Desc	"Become more skill with poison and at spellcasting, massively strengthening your spell and poison damages. (Grants global spell damage and poison damage while increasing the mana cost of all poison-based spells and skills.)"
	TextureName	Textures/Icons/Items/wands_archmage.tga
	
	PassiveDynamicStatMultSpellDamage	1.0
	PassiveDynamicStatMultPoisonDamage	0.07
	
	DynamicStatMultPowerNeeded	+1.0
	
	Skill			SkillWampirBlood
	Skill			SkillAuraOfPoison
	Skill			SkillPoisonArrow
	Skill			SkillNaturesRevenge
	
	Skill			PlayerShadowBoltSkillName
	Skill			PlayerDeathRuneSkillName
	
	RequiredSkill-One	PlayerArcaneBlastSkillName
	RequiredSkill-One	PlayerHolybolt
	RequiredSkill-One	PlayerArcaneSwarmSkillName
	RequiredSkill-One	PlayerBoltOfGloomSkillName
	RequiredSkill-One	PlayerDeathRuneSkillName
	
	PerLevel	SkillArcaneMightPerLevel
	BaseCost	1
}

Any thoughts on giving these spells an active effect, requiring a wand and firing a missile of their respective element? As demonstrated by Tigrath in this thread. You mentioned wanting to make wands more enticing - having a manaless ranged basic attack scaling with weapon damage would certainly do it.

[Destro*]

Thank you for pointing out the typo! I'll fix that right up for sure and put out a patch.

As for wand projectiles, it's a great suggestion, but I really want Fiery Blast and the other introductory level spells to fill that role of a 'ranged magic projectile' source of damage. Plus, there are some balance considerations there that would be a pain to deal with.

Wands are currently unique in that they have the highest per-gear slot source of spell damage, so I think that they are in a good spot right now. Mage's just needs more raw damage overall right now, which I'm fine-tuning with tons of playtesting for the next patch. And, once that is done, alternate damage sources will not be as appealing fo sho.

[Exovi]

A gift - Check the screenshots:

NpcFreeRecruitWarriorMale1
{
	Base		BaseNPCWarrior

	Archetype	ArchetypeNpcFreeRecruitWarriorMale

	Skill		SkillWearAll
}

Have to do this for every recruit type and archetype in Database\Monsters\npcTypes && Database\Monsters\npcArchetypes, including the expansion ones. Fairly certain you need to not use "overrides", and instead entirely copy and replace. As I understand it, override simply tacks on the new skill without deleting the old. Please correct me if I'm wrong, though!

Oddly I'm having mixed success - one female ranger has only SkillWearAll while another retains the SkillBasics. There must be some other section out there that I haven't found, yet.

You'd probably want to increase NPC starting skill points drastically if you implement this, though! Otherwise I worry they'd end up with 6 mediocre skills instead of 1 or 2 decent ones.

And another found typo (_npcArchetypes):

ModBaseArchetypeNpcFreeRecruitDemonHunter overrides BaseArchetypeNpcFreeRecruitDemonHunter
{
	...
	MinRandomSkills		3
	MaxRandomSkills		4
	MaxSkills		8Reaver
	RandomSkill		SkillUnholyStrike
	RandomSkill		SkillRampage
	...
}

[Destro*]

Ahhh, the pain of the allow-equipment-slot skills. I had tried this in the past a few ways and had no success. But, I have improved a lot since then, so I can certainly give this another go!

And, regarding skill points, I agree that they'd need another balance pass.

Thanks for all of the contributions! If you have any more feedback Exovi please let me know.

As a side note, regarding the next patch: It'll be a little while for the next patch because I usually get the bulk of my work done on weekends and my birthday is this weekend (fun times with family, yay), thus, it might be a slow on the next patch. But, I'm like 99% sure that unless something catastrophic happens, the 23rd or 24th (likely the 24th) will be the next big patch day.

[Exovi]

I remember seeing you comment something about it more than a year ago when you first started on this mod! After getting a slew of awful recruits recently I looked into it as well.

I wonder if it would be possible to assign 2~4 random combat skills and 0~2 random work skills?

Have enjoyed your mod so far, I really like the implementation of Might spells.

Enjoy! I've a birthday coming up this 16th as well.

[Exovi]

The "Might" spells seemed pretty cool from a distance on a Savior/Fire Mage only using Sweeping Flames, but after playing until level 14 with an Ice Wizard they don't seem very balanced. With the below skills my wand's melee attack always did more damage than either spell.

[1] Arctic Shard
[1] Frost Nova
[8] Frozen Might

Each level of Frozen Might will only add 2 damage, and with 2.17 to 2.65 damage the Magic Crushing Blow (max roll) has little effect. For comparison, Sweeping Flames is 107-131 Base.

I think the Might passive and single level spells could work really well with some balancing, though. Perhaps balanced around keeping Might at 1/4 of their character level (which, coincidentally, is about 1/4 of their skill points). Someone could put his entire point base into Might for much higher damage, but would feel the diminishing returns on skill point and mana costs, plus less versatility from other skills.

PlayerSkillArticShard
{
	Base		BaseSkillOffense
	BaseName	$$ArcticShard$$
	Desc		$$ArcticShardDesc$$
	TextureName	Textures/Icons/Skills/arcticShard.tga
	Power		2
	TotalTime	0.83
	Spell		2    // Should this be a 1?
	UseCheckTime	1.0
	UseCheckChance	0.6
	Projectile	ProjFrostShard
	ProjMinDamage	2.17
	ProjMaxDamage	2.65
	ProjDamageType	Cold
	ProjStatusEffect	1
	CastingAnimation	startArticShard
	Animation		castArticShard
	ShowSkillHint	1
	StatusEffect	StatusEffectArcticShard
	BaseCost		1
	StandStillToCast	1
	MaxSkillLevel	1
}

I also noticed that PC Reavers are missing their Unholy Strike, PlayerSkillUnholyStrike doesn't exist outside of SkillTrees (check attachments)

ModSkillTreeReaver overrides SkillTreeReaver
{
	Base		BaseSkillTree
	Name		$$SkillTreeReaver$$
	Desc		$$ReaverDesc$$
	
	Skill		SkillAttackReaver
	Skill		SkillBowAttackHunter
	Skill		SkillWearAll
	Skill		SkillPassiveReaver
	
	Skill		SkillTwoHandedMastery
	Skill		PlayerSkillUnholyStrike
	Skill		SkillFireStrike
	Skill		SkillBreech
	Skill		SkillCharge
	Skill		SkillRavage
	Skill		SkillTerrorize
	Skill		SkillWampirBlood
	Skill		SkillRampage
	
	Skill		SkillVenomMight
}

[Destro*]

Warning: Wall of text!

Well the big problem that I face with spells is that the projectile spells are extremely overpowered in regards to their scaling potential.

Fire Maelstrom literally can only get spell damage and elemental damage. That's it. But, arctic shard can get spell damage, elemental damage, critical damage and projectile damage. I think that crushing blow is also exclusive to arctic shard in this example, but I don't remember 100% off the top of my head. So, I am not listing that.

What this means is that if I give Fire Maelstrom similar damage to arctic shard, then Arctic Shard will far outscale Fire Maelstrom from the very start of the game simply because it has 4 multipliers versus Fire Maelstrom's 2. In fact, unless I give it an obnoxious amount of damage (which I have via all of my calculations), it will never even have a chance to be comparable to arctic shard. This isn't exclusive to my mod either. In the vanilla game, projectile spells are overpowered relative to the big area spells as soon as you start getting decent amounts of projectiles (though the aoe spells are good for fast farming once overgeared!). Direct Spell Damage is likely implemented to balance that out a bit (and I haven't playtested in vanilla to know how effective it is), but it still doesn't change anything in regards to the power level of projectiles vs. aoe spells.

Ultimately, I'm starting to feel like I bit off more than I could chew. In order for my system to work 'ideally' and be balanced, all spells should be able to crit. And, there should be an 'Area Damage' mod similarly to the projectiles/direct spell dmg lineup. This would let me put similar numbers on the spells and make balancing godly easy, because all spells would have the same number of multipliers. But, I can't mod such changes in afaik. And, that's what's making balancing these spells so hard, because I literally can't achieve perfect balance with my current approach. Though, I still think that balancing around player level 50 (arctic shard has comparable damage to Fire Maelstrom at level 50) is about as good as I can ever hope to achieve with my current 'mights' system.

Idk. I've got a lot of mixed thoughts on changes that I could do to try to work this out. Like, for example, separate scaling for the spells with different multipliers? But, then that is basically like just going back to leveling up spells individually. Perhaps I need a hybrid approach between 'mights' and leveling up the individual spells? Well, still you'd go back to being incentivized to level just a few spells. But, if I get the numbers right, I suppose it could work because of cooldowns & it not being worth it to invest in a single spells beyond a certain point (negative damage growth scaling could be a thing?)? I don't know.

Well, that's kind of my thoughts on trying to balance out the spells. I think that the 'Might' system is a step in the right direction. But, another phase of change will be necessary at some point. If you have any ideas, please feel free to throw some out.

As for the 'spell 2' line, that's a typo. And, I will add in PlayerSkillUnholyStrike! Thanks for pointing them out.