Hotfix Mod / Aranna Legacy Mod

Transmute 'II'(good) temporarily losses the 'II'(upper left corner) while placed in the spellbook. Reselling the Transmute 'II' to the shopkeeper results in the spell being forever lost, though the cash credit is correct. I assume it is being added to the original Transmute spell count. Have not progressed far enough to get higher Transmute variations this run through, but previously the great transmute did the same.

I got 2 'Fire Shot(I)' spells, cannot remember if they dropped or were from hired members, which use the same graphics as Lesser Embers(I)'. The Fire Shot spell max's out at a pathetic 4 to 5 damage, making it useless. I don't see the purpose of this spell, but am willing to hold onto them if used in a recipe.

PS:
I apologize if in fixing Vix's armor the windstone armor got messed up. We could 'survive' teleporting Vix to Eirulan if the stash spell isn't available to us.

Fire Shot was meant to be a tutorial spell from single player and it should definitively not drop.

I tried to fudge the tutorial into giving me Dreven. Didn't succeed. Dreven makes it to the prisoner area, but is removed when reloading a save point. So, they might have been in the inventory after the prisoner thing. Dreven's personalized equipment got stripped but some extra stuff made it through the transition.
I know about the Dreven mod. I was just trying to break the scripting, while playing with the new areas KG added.

A suggestion for a new spell:

We need a rending aura spell (melee/combat) that gives a sweep attack, allowing the melee dudes to attack all targets around him in an arc.

This is because in general rangers and mages have the ability to do aoe damage (arrow bane, ricochet, mage spells), but the poor melee guys are stuck to dealing single target damage. As a result, their overall damage over the course of the game ends up being low.

A spell like that could give them what they need.

It could work in a XXX radius (depending on the melee-combat relation) and do YYY% of current damage (also depending on the melee-combat radius - like other rending auras do). Sort of like tremor, but I find tremor to be extremely useless, so this could be what tremor SHOULD work like, having a bigger radius and doing better damage.

This would be a nice buff to the underpowered 2H/dual wield characters. At the moment they have little role: their damage output is nothing compared to mages/rangers, and they are easy to kill, making them somewhat useless. They don't work too well with a sword&shield dude either: if he uses provoke, the monsters will still occasionally hit the other melee character around, as provoke works in x second intervals and not constantly. And if you use the 'berserk' spell, as you should be, that basically leaves them unconscious a lot.

Another way would be to buff tremor drastically: make it do % of your regular damage instead of the failed idea of INT dependancy, and increase its radius quite a bit. Then again, it would be probably a good idea to rework those underpowered skills (like shred blood and arcing) as well.

I still think arcing should work like ricochet (after the jump, it's checked again for a maximum of 5 jumps) and do a percentage of the original spell's damage rather than fixed damage dependent on INT, as it's too low.

Shred blood could simply use better damage, as it's marginal at best atm.

Compared to rangers, of equal level, they deal about the same damage with the AoE powers.

Oh, sorry for confusion. I meant regular AOE/multi target damage wit regular attacks (like ricochet), not powers. Those are fine

Compared to bowyers (arrowbane), throwers (ricochet) and mages (spells and DPS curses), the warriors are the only class that cannot attack more than one enemy at a time with their non-power attacks

@whomisold: Fire Shot was intended as pure tutorial/beginner spell, as soon as the average party level is >1 it's rather improbable that you will see this spell drop from a monster or chest. Sometimes however new party members may have this spell too.

Higher/custom variants of the Transmute spell are a bit special. Shop keepers sometimes remove them if they are offering already the lowest/default variant of this spell. The way they are added don't allow a different icon in the spellbook, however it should be possible to give them an enumerated name.

@czacki: Another M/CM spell to affect multiple enemies (anyhow) would be nice, and perhaps even the swirling animation form 2H could be borrowed, but creating and testing such a spell takes a remarkable amount of time.

A possibly continuing Arcing could be interesting, but concerning afford to implement it or about the balancing I can't say anything right now.
 

It probably would take a lot of time, yeah.. but I think it would increase the class balance considerably. Melee dudes already suffer from being melee, albeit I must admit the change of attack code improved them considerably. Esp. for solo play (or playing with a friend - single character each)

Either way, still hyped for the next version & trying my new party idea :)) and my half-giant thrower which I play with my friend online. Quite hilarious

There's still some bugging regarding inns. I just got Taar and sent her to the inn. Then, I saved the game, started a new one, and Taar vanished entirely. She's not at the inn, and she's not at the great hall. I recall that in previous versions, I used to lose adult pets like that. Which was a pain.

And still waiting for the new version that will bugfix my rapid attacks, argh!

However it may be that your inn causes a disfunction because a containing member is broken.
Best would be - if possible - to take out all heroes/pets from the inn, save the game, exit DS2, restart, and then send the members back to the inn. It may be necessary to kick actors forever because of 6 member limit - but with a broken inn you almost had to be glad if even these steps are still working.

You can actually provoke this disfunction, it usually happens when members are stored in the Inn while importing a party from v2.2 into v2.3/addon.
Besides of the work-around with an empty Inn (during the import) there is no fix for it as far as I know.

well, my inn ATM is empty. There was only Taar sent there, but she vanished. I'll set up a MP game and recruit her once more, that should help. Hopefully it will clean up the bugged records of Taar from my game.

Sorry to continuously ask of this, but how's progress? Got another sexy javelin of rapid attack today, can't wait to have some fun with it.

Fantastic:)

By the way - the power "Charged shots", does it work with rapid attacks? I don't think it does.

Flurry and Elemental rage also don't work with rapid attack IIRC, making them less fun...

oh I see.

By the way, I always wondered what's the relation between the number of party members and the rate of power recharge. In general, the more guys you have, the slower the powers seem to recharge. Which is fine by me (makes solo characters or small parties also rewarding to play). I wonder however if it is specified somewhere in game files

Updates/Fixes:

• Bug in a speed related function fixed.
• Bug in emanation of Packmule pet fixed.
• Scrub Boar pet will need now about +20% more food to grow.
• For v2.3/addon only: Items stats for several items slightly revised.
• For v2.3/addon only: Work-around for some missing roll-over help keys added.
• For v2.3/addon only: As work-around to find out the bonus chance for 'Chance on/when Hit' bonuses you can add now 'show_chance_on_hit = true' and 'show_chance_when_hit = true' in the DungeonSiege2BrokenWorld.ini file to get a report as soon as the item is equipped (sadly multiple bonus chances on the same item will be summarized).

Fantastic

by the way:

"For v2.3/addon only: As work-around to find out the bonus chance for 'Chance on/when Hit' bonuses you can add now 'show_chance_on_hit = true' and 'show_chance_when_hit = true' in the DungeonSiege2BrokenWorld.ini file to get a report as soon as the item is equipped (sadly multiple bonus chances on the same item will be summarized)."

That sounds like you don't like multiple bonus chance on the same item - and here I thought those are the most fun (and sought after) items

I see! that explains why powers charge "slower". You need to do +100% more damage, but enemies have only +25% HP more per a party member. So in return you need to kill more enemies before the power charges up.

I made some calculations and the amount of power recharged by killing the same number of enemies is: (from 1 party member to 6 party members)

100%
63%
50%
44%
40%
38%

This means that 6-man party will need to kill roughly three times as much enemies as the single guy to recharge its powers. Sticking to 3-man parties seems favorable.

Oh, and also: you kill a typical enemy around 15-20% faster for each party member you recruit, assuming he does as much damage as the rest of the team. So, a 6-man party would kill that Skath avenger twice as fast as a solitary dude, but only gain 38% of the solo guy's power bar for doing so.

Larger team = focus on rightclicks, smaller team = focus on powers.

As powers seem more interesting, smaller teams seem more fun if you ask me

Oh, and : this also means the OLD (pre-nerf) necrolithid was only beneficial as 5th and 6th party member, otherwise it would only slow you down. The new one slows you down no matter what. Picking a party member is always favorable (and you get another useful power to use).

With larger parties, the 'strength(number and HP)' of adversary packs increase.
You also have more powers to use while other members are recharging.
A 'safety in numbers' rule comes from developing the party to take advantage of mutual abilities.
Wherein, single(or few) member parties must develop a stratagem within its limit.

Regardless of party size, Powers must be conserved for the more difficult bosses or pack situations. Recharge with the easier pack slaughter.

@KillerGremal
The 'estimated DPS' idea, along with accumulated Mana Regen. & Health Regen., might be something to add to 'Resistances' mouseover.
I am sure there are a few deranged people that struggle with deciding what weapons combination is best for their dualist.
That snippet of yours is a treasure. :thumbup1:

// Super Fast Recharge, 100% Efficiency (effective reload time = 12 s)
reload_damage_formula = 12 * (6 + 1.5 * #character_level) * (1 + 0.022 * #character_level) * #active_group_members;

// Fast Recharge, 100% Efficiency (effective reload time = 20 s)
reload_damage_formula = 21 * (6 + 1.5 * #character_level) * (1 + 0.022 * #character_level) * #active_group_members;

// Medium Recharge, 85% Efficiency (effective reload time = 30 s)
reload_damage_formula = 35 * (6 + 1.5 * #character_level) * (1 + 0.022 * #character_level) * #active_group_members;

// Slow Recharge, 66% Efficiency (effective reload time = 40 s)
reload_damage_formula = 60 * (6 + 1.5 * #character_level) * (1 + 0.022 * #character_level) * #active_group_members;

all this regarding dmg and power recharge rates has already been discussed in various ds gaming sites and ds game guides. g00gle and gamefaqs are your best friends...

Moreover, you probably have experienced in-game that powers also will be recharged for party members who don't deal any damage (as long as any other party member is causing any damage).
Hence there must be some kind of damage-sharing between the party members, but this is a pure observation, there is no code in rules.skrit proving this, nor any other 'power controller' that counts how many party members you have and how much damage they do over time.

But besides of this however there are several manners to 'affect' power recharging.
One way is simply to redefine the recharge times for powers - the corresponding file (active_skills.gas) is actually one rare file where you can find a reference on linear influence of party members.
And there are some other manners too, some are clever gameplay-wise, some are sophisticated modding-wise, and some are quite doubtful when it comes to cheating/exploiting. :o

I'd risk saying that power recharge doesn't need a revamp - it works decently. When playing solo, you can spam powers left and right - that's good (otherwise solo would be not only very boring, but also very hard). Big teams don't need that kind of powerspam, and it would overpower them grately, so the current setup is fine too.

I don't know if GPG done this intentionally (probably not, nobody thought about people who like to play solo characters from time to time) but it works decently.

well i spent some time thinking about a melee aoe passive skill and the only thing i cud think of or rather lack of thinking, cuz i only thought of ripping off another game... its called the cleave skill.

this is a ripoff from dnd based games like neverwinter nights whereby delivering a killing blow to an enemy allows u to hit an adjacent enemy.

so in ds2, we can make it like a skill that has a chance on hit to allow the char to hit an adjacent enemy. something like a melee version of the combat magic skill, arcing.

the hit can also be set up to "daisy chain" allowing multiple continuing hits (something a little like the advanced version of cleave called great cleave in dnd). the cleave dmg can be set to be dependent on strength while the chance to cleave can be set to increase with more skill pts invested in the cleave skill as usual.

tho the problems czacki mentioned about lack of aoe skills for melee chars, i personally feel that they dont need any. the melee powers are more than sufficient to take care of that. any aoe/crowd control problems are easily solved by having some playing skill to herd the monsters in a pack or use the gravity stone power and unleashing either a whirling strike or staggering blow with a 2 hand weapon.

since 2 hand weaps do the highest dmg and the power's dmg is based off that, u can easily wipe out mobs with a 2 hand barbarian. the barbarian can also take out bosses with ease with brutal attack which gains a big dmg boost from the 2 hand weapon's high base dmg. i actually killed the archmage on merc with 5 brutal attack blows which was quite an anti climax... fight lasted about a minute... lol :mrgreen:

now on another topic this time about the power recharge rates, i also noticed another influencing factor not mentioned anywhere. that is the power recharge rate is also dependent on the monster mp hp scaling in formulas.gas

i discovered this while making my 9 player mod. this mod simulates monster hp and exp scaling as if 9 out of 12 char slots were being filled regardless of how many chars were actually in the party. think of it as a high difficulty mod but with more rewards like more exp. i noticed that with this mod on, powers recharged faster while without it they seemed to recharge slower.

so this might seem to appear that the hp scaling in formulas.gas also affects power recharge rate. thus with more party members, the power recharge rate needs to slow down to counteract the faster recharge rate from increased monster hp scaling.

there seems a point whereby having more members doesnt slow down the power recharge rate that much due to the faster recharge from increased monster hp scaling.

by my calculation, assuming its correct, im guessing having the max 12 slots being filled doesnt drastically cut down the power recharge rate. maybe more testing needs to be done in this area to actually confirm my speculation.

tho u need a pair of extremely powerful pcs to handle an mp game with 2 players having 6 chars each totalling 12 chars in play. even a 4.5ghz extreme oc pc will still stutter playing with that many chars in the party. a pity ds is single threaded and can only use one core.

Actually, the game stutters BECAUSE of having a powerful PC. It's the worst optimization ever and you would probably run it without any issues on a single-core machine with a 2005 graphics card on 60 fps. In general, anything that's multi core will give problens. I can't even keep a steady 40 fps on my machine (Lenovo Y580 - with an i5 and 660GTX card which I have to turn off because the integrated intel 4000 graphics card gives a better FPS lol). I have 60fps only when the game starts, quite soon after that it drops to 40fps and after 2 hours it's 25-30 fps max.

I'm not sure why is it that bad, but there's little to be done about it, short of buying an OLD PC to play dungeon siege 2 on I thought about emulation at first, but it didn't work too well, as the virtual machines usually have massive issues with DirectX libraries.

As for melee: Yes, powers take care of it, but it would be remarkable for a solo melee character to be able to damage more enemies at once. Especially two-handers suffer from not enough presence - melee chars are slowest to recharge powers when you play alone, and that's because of their poor damage output which is extremely noticeable if you're alone. I think a "cleave" melee/combat rending aura would be awesome and it would make those 2H guys work well. Perhaps it should receieve a bigger bonus if you're weilding a 2H weapon?

By the way, I am amazed DS2 never got really popular, even as much as Titan Quest did. Absolutely amazing and underrated game that kept me entertained for years.

hmm thats not quite right... ds2 does NOT have the multi core bug. it runs fine on my duals and quads. your cpu is more than adequate to handle the game unless u are running vista instead of win7. the problem lies elsewhere.

one of the often overlooked factors in ds performance is the storage subsystem.

due to the streaming nature of the engine. it has to load textures and data from the hard drive as the char moves around. if u have installed the game to one of those 5000 sumthing rpm "green" drives or a 5400rpm laptop drive, these incur a significant access penalty causing the game to stall if the hard drive cant read the textures/data fast enuff.

i recommend getting an ssd (make sure that ahci is enabled for best results) to play ds with as the rapid access time will help to prevent texture/data load stuttering as well as extend battery life quite a bit if playing on the go with a laptop.

u can test this yourself by installing msi afterburner, activate the on-screen display server to show the gpu usage in-game. (if it doesnt show the gpu usage then u need to update your display drivers) it uses less than 10% of the gpu on my 9800gtx.

in fact, turning off the discrete gpu and using the integrated gpu is a better choice here since a powerful gtx660 gpu is unnecessary to run ds2. u can save power and battery life by using the integrated gpu instead and if it gives better performance as well then so much the better... :mrgreen:

I agree. I run DS2 BW with:
CPU: Intel core i3
GPU: Integrated Intel Graphics 3000
I don't have an SSD

I run DS2 BW at max settings without problems (~45 FPS).
I only notice that performance slightly decrease in some circumstances: buffs and large battles.

I have all party members with 3 buffs.
Also, 3 party members have a dual-class buff and a summon.
With all these activated, if I recite a chant, sometimes, the game slow down a little.
Finally, only with all the above buffs and the chant, in large battles (with 8+ enemies), the frame rate can drop to 20-25 FPS (so, still in the "playable zone").

Well, I recall running it on my (old) PC with a subpar processor on 60 fps all the time.

I do have an SSD, but it doesn't really help.

This game just refuses to run well on powerful machines. A candidate for worst code ever: it gets SLOWER the better machine you have.

My friend runs it on 60+ fps all the time and his machine is maybe at best 10% as powerful as mine. We play multiplayer together and he admits that even turning the far-sight hack on doesn't decrease the FPS below 50.

Since your using this mod why not try putting "buff_effect_duration = 0"(without the quote marks) into your BW ini file.
(...Documents\My Games\Dungeon Siege 2 Broken World\DungeonSiege2BrokenWorld.ini)
It removes a noticeable amount of CPU loading that you probably don't experience under Vanilla DS2 Version 2.2 .

I'm using it for a long time now - it does help to keep the fps those 5-10 frames higher, but a steady 60 FPS is pretty much out of the question regardless of what I do.

There used to be a page where you could add you graphics card to DS2 config, but that one didn't help either.