Hotfix Mod / Aranna Legacy Mod

Thanks for that great mod KillerGremal.Not a big problem but could you make that Melee+Combat Skill animation a little up.
It looks like its on a dwarf.It turns @ heroes pants.Other animations just perfect just like this mod.
When you have time,it could be good to fix.

good work on the mod but i cant seem to get the enhanced autocasting too work....
ive got 2 identical spellbooks and wondered what "All the spellbooks to support this expanded autocasting feature must have the same look, and there is even a tweak to get other colors than just grey." means..... (and the link from the tweak at http://dungeonsiege2.net/ds2fun/mods/options-hm-alm.php only leads the this forum)
would apperciate help

and jeah im new to ds2 :P

Since not everybody may need this feature and because of the (slightly) higher CPU load you have to enable this feature first with e.g. autocast_slots = 4,4 for your DS2 *.ini file.
Additionally this feature only works with a spell-book that looks like this (instead of grey there would be other secret colors too, however typical for all of them is this 'eye' upon).

So far this is all you need to know to make this feature work. Leave a message if the things are clear until here and i will post the tweak/procedure to get the rainbow colors of the grey spell-book (not sure if i ever did).

Have not been able to play for a while - and now there is a new version and a fix... Thanks very much! For me all is working fine again!

Hi, i've been using your mod for ages, havent' played the game for about a year plus, re-installed it, redownloaded the mod and now - on mercenary difficulty everything does 0 damage to all the mobs and it literally takes about 3 minutes to kill a single mob - this was never the case with the previous versions of this from 2009ish. I have only 3 mods up - The hotfix mod, the Kohl beast mod and the warhound pet mod all from - http://dungeonsiege2.net/ds2fun/mods/

I've played around with all the difficulty settings from the mod and it doesn't seem the resolve the issue. The tutorial still runs perfectly fine though, but once th e game begins - everything is 0 damage.

Hi KillerGremal,

Thanks for the mod, truly love it over the years. I have an issue though - i haven't played the game for a couple of years and just felt like having a go at it again, so i re installed the DS2 + the patch + hotfix mod + warhound mod + kohl beast mod, ran it, started a new character, the tutorial went just fine, but once i started the actual game - all my characters inclusive of the mercs were doing 0 damage to all the mobs, well not 0, but the damage was below 1, so it was taking literally a few minutes to kill a single mob right at the start of the game at level 3-4 on mercenary difficulty. Is this a bug or is there a way to overcome it? I've already played with all the difficulty settings that your mod has - that didn't seem to resolve anything, it did reduce the HP of the mobs, but the damage done to them was still below 1. It's really quite unplayable on mercenary difficulty at the low level at the moment, i'm not sure about how it would scale up to the higher levels and difficulties.

one head higher would be perfect.
Just started DS again.Just noticed your new version and just jumped on it.Thank you for it.
Im gone to Alpha 2y: (18-Jun-2011) To 3b.And noticed somethink i think its about your Chance_On_Hit tuning and it shouldnt shown.

Its only happening on my spear thrower char.And when she start to attacks its spams so many messages on chatbox.
An Example;

CHANCE_ON_HIT_TUNING:Rejecting [hero_dryad] for Actor [spell_proc_lightning_burst_lesser],ChanceTemp [0.45863]
/[1.25000], Time [888.310]

I think you are understand but more clearly.This times always changing.Spell_Proc thinks=Chance on hit skill on Weapon.As i change another weap with diff. C.O.Hit and that spell notifier changing too.

EDIT: Bah just noticed that attachment feature.Awesome.
Attachment? Buggy? NOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo...........

@Nieth: I'm sorry, I have no explanation for this. If the problem is still pending then remove once all mods, start the game, and if everything is ok then go on adding mods one after the other. It would be the best to remove all savegames temporarily form the savegame folder and to start a new party for this test.

@Devil May Cry: I will recheck the effect position.

About the 'chance on hit' matter, evidentially I have forgotten to remove a speed report :o (in recent time I rarely find the opportunity to play with the addon :(). Generally however the file seems to be the final version.
By the way, do not wonder if the indicated speed doesn't match the real weapon speed, it's rather an auxiliary value that partially represents the basic strength of a weapon in order to scale up on-hit effects.

I guess there will be another version soon, besides of these two things there is a (technical) problems with shockwaves, also some files are not in sync with other mods.
 

I have started up DS2BW again after a long time. Upgrading Legacy from 2f to 3b & i'm having the same problem as Nieth, less than 1 damage with only Legacy 3b installed.
I removed 3b & loaded up the save in vanilla & the damage went back to normal so it's definately something in 3b as it wasn't happing with 2f.

I decided to fire up DS2BW again after a long absence, i was using Legacy version 2f, & i'm having the same less than one damage problem as Nieth.
Being a bit of a modder myself i decided to try & track the issue comparing files from 2f & 3b. When i came accross the rules.skrit i noticed that 2f's was about 20k bigger so i used 2f's in 3b.
Voila, damage went back to normal so there is something in 3b's rules.skrit or a skrit that it references that's causing the problem.
Are the mobs being given an armour bonus that's reserved for higher difficulties?

It does seem to be the mercenary difficulty so at present i'll reduce the diff in the ini.

Try once to start a new party, just to see what happens. Also take a look into your 'resources' folder. Compared to Alpha 2f the current mod release is ~10mb larger, possibly the compatibility to other mods is not be given anymore.

You misunderstand, it is a new party. I started a new game with 3b & found even in the tutorial i could only do 1 or less damage which carried on to the main game.
Searching for answers i swapped out the 3b rules.skrit with the 2f one & damage to the weak haku at the begining went back to normal.

The changes to the difficulty and\or damage calculations in 3b have made mercenary extremely difficult & that's with 70 difficulty in the ini.
I have never experienced anything like this from your great mod before.

After struggling through & getting Taar her spells are doing 3-4 damage.

@Jaylo: Sorry, I'm not able to reproduce your matter...
For example, a hero at level ~3 with 3.1 melee levels and 22 strength using the weakest dagger (2-3 damage) gets red damage numbers of 4 until 6 (common strikes, not criticial, in GUI 5-9) when fighting with a Hak'u-Skinner of level 3.
Spell damage easily reaches 5-10 for a level 3 mage. In the tutorial the damage is some lower though but 2 or 3 on minimum.
This happens without setting a custom difficulty, but even if I set it equal to 110 the damage numbers are (almost) as high as before - definitely much higher than 1.

So check out your 'resources' folder again for incompatible mods. Note maybe, if the addon is installed in a different folder than the original version v2.2 then you have to check two resources folders - the one of the addon, but also the resources folder of v2.2 (because the addon takes access on both folders and will read in all v2.2 resources too).

That's all I can recommend for now. I guess you have got my PM with the e-mail address to send your party at!? Even it's a new party, it won't matter.

First off my apologies KillerGremal for saying it was something in the mod, it wasn't.
I'm using Elys's succubus launcher & her ds2res mod file is tucked away in the launcher folder, not in the games resources folder.
I unchecked the option to load the modlet in the launcher & damage works fine now. I also had a look at the files in the modlet & there is editing of the same files so the clash is right there.
Once again my apologies, it was my mistake.

@Jalyo: Nice to read that you could solve the problem.
Generally however the Succubus and this mod should work together, at least in a former test it did. There is only the one or the other minor conflict but this shouln't really matter.

At this occasion, there's a little update for the Hotfix and Aranna Legacy mod:
- Technical problem with shockwaves fixed.
- Effect for melee/combat-magic buff slightly lifted.
- Bonus value revised for Life Embrace buff used by monsters.
- Several "+% gold dropped" bonuses on items rebalanced.
- Content updated to be in sync with other mods.
- Obsolete test files for 'chance on hit' tuning removed (v2.3/Addon only).

After delving deeper i found i actually had the Auto Engage Drink v0_8 mod mixed in with the succubus modlet & had edited the base starting PC's bonus_skill_points to over 200. This seemed to me to cause the reduction in damage dealing capability. Built-in anti cheat?

@Jaylo: As mentioned once in a former post, the game will be ~5% easier if someone hasn't got any bonus skill points, and it will be ~5% harder if someone has all possible bonus skill points (about 40 across merc/vet/elite until level 100).
This is intended to help (a bit) party members in/from the Inn who have missed quests with skill point rewards. The management to hand out (registered) skill points later would possible though but quite painful and inflexible, also with the tuning now the gameplay will be more balanced on maps where you don't get any skill point rewards at all.

That's the simple background. But honestly I don't like extensive cheating, this is what make me leave the DS1 multiplayer :(, and probably I'm still traumatized.
However if you think you really need to start with (so many) additional bonus skill points then just lower the game difficulty with the difficulty option. Perhaps ask yourself how far 200 skill points are really necessary, starting with +20 skill points already have an immense impact on the gameplay.

Thank you for clarifiying that for me, makes sense. It's not that i like extensive cheating or anything, i just tinker with files to see what's changable.
In that case what number would i need to change in the rules.skrit to say have 3 points per level up. I know where in the vanilla rules but your have been extensivly changed.
Also how does the skills used in combat increase, is it a fixed amount while in combat or something like more damage with that skill gives greater increase.

@Jaylo: 3 skill points per level instead of 1 would give you finally a surplus of 200 as well... :o
That will be too extreme at the end I guess, if all (6) party members get +1 skill point the game will become about 0.2% harder - with dozens of additional skill points that still will work quite well but probably not with hundreds.

However, I'm aware of the 'skill point hunger' some people have ;), so I think you should give a try to the half_as_skilled option - sounds daunting indeed but if you read exactly (and understand some math) you possibly will discover an acceptable way.

Thanks for the info.
I've just added the little bit needed for more skill points per level.
In the half_as_skilled desc you didn't put what inverse does.

Wow, super cool to see this community still relativity active! I've been playing DS/DSII games on and off since release and I'm just now getting into some of these mods. This mod seems pretty cool thus far, but I'm just getting started with it.

One thing I am curious about, as it's something I wanted to see, or do since day one, is find a way to make a few members for my party; i.e. make two custom characters via the character creation, and somehow put them in the same party. Essentially a way to combine party members from different saves, into a single party. Wouldn't happen to know a way of doing so?

@SeventhShin: That's an interesting idea, to compose a whole party as you want it, with personally customized party members.

However it could be difficult to place this into a mod. I'm not sure if the technical/skrit support would be sufficient to do this, also a pretty GUI would be quite intensive to create. :o

I thought so, but I wonder if there is a simple work around? I'm thinking making a character then adding him to the world via a mod, and then have him join my party as any I would any other character. Easier said then done though, at least for me, I've yet to even get the mod kit working.

Hello KillerGremal,

awesome to see you still working on the mod! I reinstalled DS2 today and I'm having a blast. I have to applaud your fantastic workaround for Provoke power, it FINALLY works! Well, for all but one kind of enemy: Kurgans (and their variations) completely ignore provokes in general, perhaps it's a bug?

I would also love to mention a few things that might be tweaked:

1. Multiplayer shrines. When one player recites the chant, the other standing in the shrine should also get the benefit! Right now he gets nothing and can't invoke his own chant because the shrine gets inactive. (Oh yeah - and happy to report that so far your latest version works fine in multiplayer, I've been playing with a friend for a while - no gamebreaking bugs sighted)

2. I know this would probably upset some people, but currently there is an easy way to "cheat" on the weapon attack speed. If you take a step immediately after shooting/casting a spell and then do it again, you bypass weapon cooldown. That way you can achieve rapid strike speed of attacks by simply clicking fast - attack, tiny step, attack, tiny step.

This isn't an issue for parties because you usually don't have enough room, but for people playing single character it's kinda broken (especially for crossbows, you can get perma-rapid strike attack speed for them because their basic animation time is so short).

To balance things out, perhaps you could install a cooldown method after which the attack CANNOT be done? Say, if a crossbow takes 2 seconds to rearm, introducing a true 2seconds cooldown during which the weapon can't be fired despite taking a step.

Of course, it's easy to notice that without this "trick" slower ranged weapons/spells are generally inferior in DPS, so a small buff to crossbows would be a good compensation.

This applies to all magic and all ranged weapons. The melee ones, I think, also work like that, but because of the need to be close you can't really make any use of this bug (making solo melee characters weak compared to archers/mages - they already suck because of the fact melee monsters hit them constantly and if you add this bug...)

I often play loner mode with my friend and it annoys us that this bug makes ranged characters MUCH stronger. it's like that since 1.00 DS2, undoubtedly a faulty engine design, but perhaps it can be fixed in some way?

3. Aether blast needs some balancing...

it's too strong with multiple summons.

ESPECIALLY when you use the ghost summon... You can capture a miniboss with him - those guys have sick amounts of health points, an aether blast with a captured Skath Avenger boss, for instance, does unreal amounts of damage.

I propose two fixes here:
a) slightly lower the damage for multiple summons (each instance cuts the original damage by 15% or so)
b) make it so that dominated creatures use GHOST's HP pool for calculating the damage from Aether Blast power - so you can't get five-digit damage on level 1 aether blast power anymore by capturing a miniboss....

4. The rending aura that grants dodge (melee/combat magic)... In lategame, it's easy to get 100% dodge thanks to that. Isn't it a bit excessive? I mean, immortal characters are a bit weird.

think of it: 30% from dodge skill, 20% from wind embrace, 40% from rending aura (easy to get with feral wrath+enveloping embrace maxed) and maybe a bit from gear (easy to get from windstep boots/ shadow set) OR a scorpion queen aura = over 100% dodge already!

I think there should be a cap, like 80% dodge MAX, and values higher should be discarded. That would balance things out cause right now we can have immortal characters which makes the game a joke....

5. Early reagents still too strong.... By the time you can get a bow that does maybe 20-30 damage (by finding a good rare one with both +min/max damage AND +damage %), you can EASILY enchant a "great short bow" with nine "jagged arrowheads" (+6 max dam each) and get 12-80 or so. I think this disproportion is too much: the enchanted weapons should NOT be twice as strong as a good rare! because:

a) player should be rewarded for finding a good item, enchanted items? you can make them every game every time = no luck involved
b) It kills the purpose of ANY findable weapon when enchanted ones are much much better

it's less imbalanced for late game weapons (beacuse you can't get rapid attack or berserk enchanted) but for early game weapons enchantable ones are totally overpowered

suggestion: cut the bonus by half or so

Jagged arrowheads: +3 or +4 instead of +6
Raptor tooth: +4 instead of +7

it will still be a very powerful choice, but you will at least have a choice of finding a better rare weapon (which is more fun that enchanting weapons every game because they are so much better for levels 1-20)

6. Well that one is my personal request but can we have a "nerfed pets" variable so I can switch between the original (unnerfed) Necrolithid/Lapdragon and your version by adding that info to .ini?

Cause I don't like the fact they are useless in your mod and I have to add the unnerfed pet_spl.gas to your mod every time you release a new version and it's a bit tiresome :P

7. This is more of a question: is there a limit on Runes of might?
My friend runs with four of those, not sure if that would be balanced if he had like 20 or so :P Not to mention the FPS drop.

8. Some powers need love. Repulse, Freezing Aura and a couple others are currently very useless.... For repulse, it's made redundant simply by taking a few steps back, freezing aura on the other hand does little damage....
Same with most of the Fist of stone powers, they suck!

9. This bothers me for a really long time: Chant of stone.

This skill adds armor/health based on INTELLIGENCE...

it's pointless.. all it does is make mages unkillable (they just skill 8 melee points, put 15 points in this skill and suddenly they have bigger armor than Warriors, easily....) It's useless for intended users (melee characters)

making it work with STRENGTH would be MUCH better. The melee characters are already inferior to ranged ones, so I don't think this would make them overpowered in any way (especially if you put a limit on "100% dodge" as I described above, they need some compensation to be able to survive in late game!! especially on 200-500% difficulty :P)

10. Analogically, Tremor should be based on strength, and Shred blood on Dexterity. Making them intelligence based is imho a faulty design by Microsoft (their damage, even with all the points sunk into respective skills, is laughable for a typical fighter/archer - and the game doesn't really offer a way to increase in intelligence without being a mage, which kills the purpose of making an archer or fighter in the first place.. not that the skill is that strong even with 500 intelligence, that is....).

Making them based on the primary stat of intended user would make them actually worthwile.

Also, greaaaat job!!!! DS2 is better than ever now.

If you could respond to those points and share your point of view, I'd be grateful!

cheers!

Hi guys, not to butt in on your conversation but I was curious about something regarding converting Dungeon Siege 1 skrit to DS2. A few years ago I had a similar idea to what SeventhShin is asking for but for DS1. I had the "Summon NPC" spell mod:
http://www.siegetheday.org/?q=taxonomy/term/80&page=1

I created my own NPCs (templates, icons and such), and borrowed the skrit by Foolius to adapt it for my own needs. It worked fine for me in DS1. However, I am not an experienced modder nor have I played much DS2 so I don't know if skrit such as that could be adapted from one game to the other.

That would definitely work and there's also Custom Pets Reloaded which allows you to 'buy' characters as 'pets' who then act as regular party members, gaining skills, equipping items, armor, spells, etc. Adding or changing these templates would be easy enough as well.

That's pretty interesting news, thanks for that. I am completely clueless when it comes to skrit, but maybe SeventhShin could get that working. It sounds like a "work around" for what he wants to do.

@czacki: Thanks for that big feedback!
About the Kurgans, there is no special treatment for them...

>> 1:
Shrine benefits for all nearby party members would be more social indeed. I think/hope this can be fixed.

>> 2:
That's a amazing/frightening catch! - However this cheat looks like a total click-fest!? :o
I will rethink about a work-around, however I hesitate to spend (my) time on this - it's just not possible to prevent all people doing doubtful things...

>> 3:
Aether blast and multiple summons are really a demanding combination when it comes to balancing.
Related on the Ghost, I have to check how the new amount of life points is calculated (party scaled life points come to my mind, not sure if this is respected/compensated right now).

>> 4:
Dodging works 'only' for melee and ranged attacks though, but maybe this spell bonus needs to replaced generally - there is not much 'room' left for dodging...
Perhaps the native resistance cap in DS2 should be applied for dodging and blocking too...

>> 5:
Yes that's a bug - I've thought I had fixed this already... :o

>> 6:
Compared to the other pets or the buffs/curses human mages are using this tuning seems to be appropriate.
DS2 can't toggle between different game content in-game (would be cool, would solve many v2.2<=>v2.3 matters), however there's the pet_difficulty option for those who think all pets would be unattractive/weak the same way now.

>> 7:
There is no limit for Runes of Might. Already now the chance to drop is quite low (much lower than for unique or set items).
Too many of these runes is not good, but once or twice (in life?) the player should find one. So perhaps 'magic find' only should not be accounted completely.

>> 8:
Most probably repulse has been made for players who don't like to reposition their actors all the time. I have to recheck the properties and to compare them with the Invulnerability power for example, perhaps a little upgrade is possible.
About freezing aura and the FoS powers I can't say anything right now.

>> 9:
That's an exploit anyhow. Improbably that this was intended (however should not be forbidden generally).

>> 10:
Well, it's the intelligence/magic that separates FoS from (pure) melee heroes, resp. the FoS skill tab isn't here to help both (the same way).
Assumed once there would be a 'pure mage handicap' (see >>9) then the bonuses possibly just need to be some higher to make FoS powers/skills more attractive.

Yes, the cheat with attacks per second requires vivid clicking, but basically you can attain sick attack speeds with otherwise slow weapons or spells thanks to it. Basically any action after attack immediately resets the weapon cooldown and you can attack again, the easiest one is clicking next to the target then at the target again, and repeat.

I know a person aware of the bug can simply not use it and hence "fix" it, but I think it would be awesome to purge bugs like that from this game entirely, not for the sake of people cheating on single player game but for the sake of removing the unintended game behavior

And it would really tighten the gap between ranged/magic chars and melee toons, in general..

For the ghost, maybe removing their "possession" ability and giving them something else to compensate would be a good workaround? It would certainly take less time than introducing a new line of code to prevent the captured mini-bosses from doing 20000 damage through Aether blasts
As for multiple summons, I think it's a good thing it's powerful because it's not easy to position compared to staggering blow/ravaging strike and it requires a lot of investment in terms of skill points - but it's a "tad" too much right now, maybe 10-15% damage less for every summon you get would solve things.

As for dodging, I urge you to keep the spell effect of +dodge% - melee characters, esp. using provoke power, generally suck hard without big dodge ability, especially on higher difficulty setting (+100% difficulty or more), high dodge is MANDATORY and this spell helps a lot making them able to use endgame gear and not every bit of dodge gear they can get...

However introducing a dodge/block cap of 80% (80% like resistances) would prevent characters from becoming invulnerable (and invulnerable characters always spoil the fun of video games).

I realize it's for melee/ranged only but there are two big ways to screw casters in this game ("Steal magic" curse which reduces their damage tenfold when maxed and "Silence" power which disables them completely in a big AoE for a good while), hence physical/ranged invulnerability may actually equal immortal chars in late game if they have curse/silence support, which is spoiling the fun on big difficulties (200-500%).

If you however decide to remove it, I'd recommend at least improving block chances of high level shields to compensate for smaller attainable dodge chance (that way shield characters will become much more attractive, too.)

Also, a small bug report: Silence power doesn't work on certain creatures. For instance, the Vai'kesh Seer boss or Vaikesh demon seem completely unaffected by silence and keep firing soul lance and other spells through it.

As for Chant of Stone, Tremor and alike: Perhaps you'd like this solution more: make then benefit 50% from intelligence and 50% from Strength? (or Dexterity in case of Shred blood). That way pure warriors could get some extra muscle through this, and mages wouldn't lose their protections entirely/ the idea of making a unique str/int hybrid would be preserved.

Also, bug report: whenever you have "hide buffs" activated (in the .ini file) and someone casts a buff in a multiplayer game, the game instantly crashes for both players. It doesn't happen when you're the only player in the game (no matter if SP or MP). Probably some synchronization bug.

Oh, I just assumed creating characters would be a simpler process than browsing models and textures.

When I created my own custom characters I used the original npc gas files as a template; I copied them and edited in the skills and character name I wanted.

Of course I did go the extra step of making my own textures so perhaps it would be too much of a pain.