Hotfix Mod / Aranna Legacy Mod

The only other cheap option would be to try running from a ramdisk(vdisk,ramdrive). It would add to your initial 'waiting time' preload but should cut down on the FPS loss due to HD access. There isn't much else that can be done to get around the screen refresh limits of 60hz of most similar system setups. Though I have heard of some 120hz Lenova system setups.

I use to turn down system detail and used 'standard' shaders to get into the 50FPS range but there are issues with this mod and I can tolerate 30~40FPS for the sake of a pretty environment.
[btw my normal display is an HD TV limits me to 60hz, Processor is a intelQ8200, GPU nvidia450GTS, 8G ram @1066, HD 7200rpm WD black (no SSD or ramdisk used).
Years ago, I had an old CRT, upto 120Hz, that gave me much better FPS consistently when a ramdisk was used]

lol personally, i feel that the candidate for worst code ever shud be the crysis series of games. this is the only game that constantly forces ppl to upgrade their hardware and doesnt run acceptably even on the top end hardware at the time.

i wonder how the devs (ubisoft) of the game test and debug it when it wont even run at an acceptable rate on their hardware... they must run it on low quality settings. this explains why there are artifacts in a lot of games these days when ultra quality settings are used. cuz no one tested it... and that imo is the worst type of "coding". untested stuff.

at least gpg tested their stuff b4 releasing it unlike some other current game devs... even better, there is another game dev (i wont mention the name) that says it is acceptable to rtm a game even if the bug list is at a thousand bugs.

if the game wont run acceptably on newer more powerful hardware then gpg cannot be blamed for it as they cannot code for sumthing that doesnt exist at the time. nuff said~

Yeah, but like 99% of games runs better on better hardware, save for those that have multi core bugs. DS2 is a novelty - very few games are like that. For that, GPG absolutely deserves a beating ;))

Seems now whenever my players cast a buff or heal spell; there stats get updated, but always seems to be missing an item increase or the buff increase doesn't stay. I have regularly reset equipped items and sometimes cancel the present buff to get the stats displayed correctly. I wonder how much effect this having on the combat rules skrit.
Perhaps this always happened but I just noticed since I am being purposely more observant.
Ill try lowering system details and recheck tomorrow when lack-of-sleep isn't playing with my head.

i think the multi core bug he is referring to is with old single core or single threaded games not working right or performing poorly on multi-core processors.

since i do not experience the same kind of issues running ds2 on my duals and quads, the reason(s) for ds2 not running smoothly for czacki lie elsewhere.

also, gpg did not make ds3 lol~ they sold off the rights to another publisher and that publisher got the infamous obsidian to be the dev. obsidian has a bad track record of screwing up sequeals. one example is nwn2 which is a terribly buggy game.

Well, it's nice to see activities in the forum, and the CPU/hardware subject really has its relevance, however the discussion seems to leave the scople of the Hotfix resp. Aranna Legacy mod!?

I mean feel free to discus on here, it does not worry me at all. But wouldn't it be better if an admin possibly could open at next opportunity an independing thread in the technical forum, 'Dungen Siege + Multicore CPUs' or so, to move the posts there!?
People looking for performance help rather will check the tech forum than the mod section.

Here is my INI file. Last change was adding pet aura effect mode '0'. The system added the mp and sp tags after a crash due to one of my careless coding experiments. Periodically it changes height and width #s as here. I force 1800x900 at the command line.

driver_description = NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
attempts = 51
regrequest_sp = true
sp_last_saved_party = Shaun
width = 1024
height = 768
bpp = 32
dialog_speed = 60
buff_limit = 3
quiver_mode = 0
autocast_slots = 4,4
recipe_transfer = true
buff_effect_duration = 0
potion_drink_mode = 0
pet_aura_effect_mode = 0
mp_active_party = Shaun
sp_active_party = Shaun

I turned object detail down to minimum, advanced shaders down to standard, removed tweaks in in my GPU profile and am still getting 'faulty stat' enumerations. Seems to effect ranged and melee characters more often than mages, even when the mage is actively using staff as weapon and has strength buff.

Tried to lamely follow the code jumps in skrits, only can for sure state the spells.skrit seems to have gotten LF's stripped in Alpha3H & Apha3I. Probably does not matter but it makes for a very difficult read. I will try removing the pet aura, char buffs and correcting height&width next in the INI file.

Update: Same after removing the no buff, no aura & fixing height and width.
Time for brunch. I will check back within the hour, then normalize everything if no further feedback.
I only check Alpha3I for the behavior. I have Alpha3H archived/available for my referencing purposes.

Update: final observation
When initially loading party; some of the item alters are not getting enumerated. This is particularly noticeable when the item lists multiple instances of an alter(+1 int, +3 int), in which case the second or third instance is not reported to the stats display(str, dex, int) or weapon damage bonus from that stat.
Things like buffs or more probably when character free weapon/shield hand to cast a spell also cause the mal-enumeration.
This can usually be corrected manually by picking up ALL the items from equipment slots and dropping them back and/or canceling the ineffective buff.
A bit time consuming and may lead to development of OCD syndrome. :tease:

job cast.skrit
HideEquipmentIfRequired$
ShowEquipmentIfRequired$

There is possibly more to this, so I will let KG wrestle with the issues.

As for skills:

While I think most of them are fine, I cry everytime I see half of Fist of Stone's skillset. It is designed around the most useless skills around, and whomever invented tremor was probably drunk.

Let me put it into numbers... even if you devote yourself entirely to maxing INT (which requires a ton of spectral dusts and enchanting, abandoning regular uniques in process) and put an ungodly amounts of skillpoints into it, it WILL suck with 35% chance for +/- 300 damage at level 100. Seriously? why is it so low? an average of 100 damage in small radius, LOL! Mark of rending alone gives similar amounts and you don't have to gimp your character with terrible INT gear that accomplishes nothing on a melee character. And you don't have to waste 40 precious skill points for that!!

So, my idea is to drastically improve tremor. I'd keep the INT scaling, but buff the numbers drastically. It needs a good 200%-400% increase to damage, and a solid +20-30% chance to occur at max level. Perhaps even +0,5 m radius, too. That would MAYBE turn it into a humorous skill for people who like to experiment and use kinky builds. Right now? Pure garbage! You have to practically strip yourself of gear and put 4xspectraldusted rings, amulets and a spellbook on yourself (and spend almost 50 skill points) to get a lousy, minuscule damage bonus. UGH! It could be five times bigger and it would still NOT be overpowered.

Then, we have joke skills like fast recovery... honestly? a minuscule reduction to the time you spent unconscious? This is probably the worst skill in the entire game. Even arcing is better. Everything is - I don't even have an idea how to change this, the whole idea is just bad! I'd give it +100% for starters, and increase up to 500% or something at level 20 - so it's at least humorous for someone spending points into this terrible skill...

Finally, execute. Why is it so bad? For a power that demands so much attention (the need to point&click at every monster separately), it's laughably weak in damage. It should easily be one of the most powerful powers in the game simply because other powers are point&click mass AoE killer spells, and this... this takes long to put the mark on many creatures, you need to gimp your damage output by seprataing fire, and in the end you get a lousy damage with no extra effects... DUH! I kinda like the idea, but it should get a SERIOUS buff. I wouldn't say that +500% is too much... some effects would also be nice. Stun, slow, silence - whatever - just anything but plain damage...

Finally - I love how KG fixed the exploit with mages picking chant of stone to get +500 armor lategame, however, without that exploit, the skill is almost tremor-level useless. The numbers could easily get 2-3 times bigger and no one would get hurt.

Also, a bad relation between nature and melee can make Tremor and Chant of Stone to provide negative values. Not sure how the game engine would treat -2 damage my Taar is capable of judging by her tremor description :P

@czacki: Maybe the FoS/BAs skills should be rechecked once.
I agree that 'Fast Recovery' (still) doesn't look so attractive, 'Execute' is rather painful to handle indeed, and Tremor... - I had to check it first, perhaps the Tremor bonus values are fixed values, not (significantly) depend on increasing level or stats. So the bonuses may be ok for level 40, but above they start to loose their usefulness.

By the way, have a clear/simple/instant way to reproduce the phenomenon of wrong stats!?

Well, in the vanilla, Tremor was maxed at 0,45 times intelligence of the char, with a 35% chance to occur (20 points). Which is pitiful. The "improvement" skills were quake (+45% damage and +1 meter radius after 20 points) and Improved Tremor (+15 damage, single point) which was simply not enough to make tremor relevant.

I kinda see where they were going, an AoE damage independent of weapon damage, but this is simply not enough damage AND radius, and the small chance (35%) of procing doesn't help as well.

A typical fist of stone maxes at what, 100 INT? for those values, tremor is a joke.
For a dedicated INT build (+56 INT from each enchanted ring, amulet and spellbook) this is STILL insignificant, and the INT build is quite gimping for everything else but the INT based skills.

So, my verdict: a nice, fat buff for those skills!

By stats, I mean strength, dexterity and intelligence. These in turn can effect damage and armor class plus a number of other things which depend on these 3 numbers.

1. Load a save game.
2. Wait till everyone finishes with their autocast spells. Assumption is that each party member has a str or dex buff that splits experience between classes. Since the phenomenon tends NOT to effect mages with mage staffs, test party should include melee and range members that have a good assortment of magical equipment effecting str and dex. My characters in Merc are about level 20.
3. Record the str, dex and int.
4. Go through their equipped items, pick up each equipped item and place it back.
5. Recheck str, dex and int against Recorded values. Update record if necessary.
6. Wait for the buffs to expire and be autocast again.
7. check str, dex and int of members again.
8. Place a 'heal' spell in autocast slot of all members. This is standard for me.
9. Go adventuring and periodically check str, dex and int after each encounter.

Not so 'instant', sorry.
I imagine few have noticed the 5%~10% fluctuation/loss in str and dex. I didn't until recently.
If you think its my mod, which is entirely UI changes I could PM it to you for your review. I could also PM you my save folder if you don't have a party that fits the test criteria. I don't use any fancy mods since too often they appear to conflict in principle with your endeavor. Even my UI mod is probably a bit outside of your fair and legit rules.

Anyway Alpha3H and my mod are the only mods used; and even with removing my mod(opps 2/3rds my inventory disappeared temperarily) the behavior was the same. I only utilize Elys v2 AllSaves while I make changes to my mod or update yours(A3G>A3H>A3I). Once I get to a satisfied point I play using DS2BW EXE. The low camera angle of elys exe is a bit annoying personally. Something in-between is on my todo list.

Lastly, I could just record a video and post it somewhere. I don't normally record games so any suggestions on easy free recorder software. Also I am not signed up for any video sharing sites. I really am that old and behind the times. Lazy too! Never signed up for facebook, twitter or any other social media soul sucking site.

WOW! I shared an image and didn't have to sell my grandkids soul.
:roll: The UI mod does that kind of stuff for me and has lots of borrowed snippets from other mods.
It is the only way I know of to get everything working together, without conflict, that I want.

@czacki: Thanks for your video offer, but even if I see 1 possible situation when this bug happened, many other situation where this could happen too will be uncovered possibly. Right now it could be quite anything, also some side-effect of any other unknown bug.

Nonetheless I will try out your 'recipe', perhaps I can find anything.
I also will recheck the for 'Strength of Mountains' skill, it originally caused a stats error too when K.O or dead, so perhaps its fix is not as persisting as it should be.
As work-around to respect higher character levels a 'character level dependence' probably should be added too for some skills.

A FoS hero gains automatically almost 2 INT per level, this would be ~175 INT basically until level 100. As approximation it's probably 4 INT per char level with the INT by items (or perhaps even up to ~5 with unique/enchanted items).

By the way, I noticed Arinth's quest now gives 1 skill point - intentional? In vanilla it gave two.

oh, right. Btw, I noticed you already tweaked arcing :P

"Alpha 2z: (3-Sep-2011)
- Chance and damage of 'Arcing' skill may slightly vary depending on
the hazardousness of the lightning spell used. Lightning arcs also
may jump on now if the chance is met another time."

Bug spotted: invinvibility doesn't stop curse damage. If you get drown/infect cast on you, and you cast invincibility power, you'll still take damage.

suggestion: once you find a recipe, it should not drop again. I'm really tired of finding the crusher hammer recipe over and over.

The same situation applies to set items. You can easily acquire multiple copies of them. It's probably even worse as you can still get drops of the earlier set items way past their usefulness (i.e. Thena's Boots and gloves dropping at level 50 or 60).

The only way I know of making these things drop only once is incredibly time consuming to implement and would mean they would have to be specific drops for them not random ones (i.e. The very first set you acquire that is placed in chests). Not sure if KillerGremal would know of a better way but probably if he did he would have already implemented it.

Umm btw. is it me or the download links are broken?
Can't download it...
Cliking on link just moves me to other site but nothing happens.
Any mirror please?

Drovan's armor stand should contain generic melee armor (no mage requirements), since his quick change can freeze the flick if the armor is not tailored to his mage skill. User can choose nature or combat paths for him via INI file. Currently the armor is Nature and I opted to not change the INI file so his mage skill was Combat.

This resulted in him freezing immediately after hire. Required a Save and Reload to correct him.

Mages(primary nature or combat) are excluded from receiving 'Wrath of Bear' benefits despite qualifying due to investment in melee 'critical strike' or ranged 'critical shot' skills. Disturbing is the fact that Finala starts with 1 skill point of 'critical strike', yet is anable to benefit from 'Wrath of Bear' regardless of weapon being utilized (normal melee weapons or mage staffs which effectively are melee weapons since experience gained goes to melee skillset when selected).

Sidenote: Wouldn't hurt to offer a new weapon type. The 'sling staff' for mages that could act as a ranged weapon giving ranged experience when selected instead of spell. Is probably well beyond the DS2 game engine or technically unfeasible or overly complex. Or it would have already been done, righty OK. :rip:

@czacki:
- Thanks, the ingoring invincibility power during curses is a nice catch. /
- It's true that unique recipes/items are not really unique, that's probably why 'unique' has been replaced by 'exceptional' in Diablo 3 - a remarkably efficient way to fix this issue. :P

@iryan:
- Compared to unique weapons/armors all recipes found will be registered as lore items. This could be useful here, and the game actually features lore items checks (there is even a flick function) so there could be some chance for a simple tuning giving the player something else (more useful) instead of the a recipe he already has found.

@bare_elf:
Thanks for testing it. Perhaps there were any technical 'server hick-ups'...
...or it was me, while updating the mirror page for Erthos Struggle map.

@whomisold:
- Thanks for reporting Drovan's equipment error, indeed forcing the game to equip items without respecting the requirements can cause strange things... :o
- For mages the type of weapon equipped doesn't really matter, a cestus or staff just may carry more pleasant magical bonuses, and will make mages look a bit more authentic possibly. Also the auto-cast AI should be quite restricive with casting 'Wrath of the Bear' on mages since critical hits only affect attacks performed by pyhsical weapons, not spells (and there is only one exception to this).
- You should talk to Erasira if you aren't content about Finala's assignment of skill points.

That is the thing. Seems Finala, Taar and Erasira have been chatting away as ladies do when there is cause.
They don't like that some cowardly Nature Mage, most probably a male, seemed fit to exclude the powerful mage casters from their own magic. Lets face it mana runs out and potions take time to work. Sometimes the honorable thing to do is start whacking nearby opponents while mana is recharging.
Taar isn't as timid as she once was. She looks at an enchantable Lance with a glint of familiarity knowing she can craft a mighty weapon.
Finala was appalled and outraged in her typical manner. The Elven folk would surely not have tolerated this magical injustice.

[/drama]

Seriously, melee and ranged classes have no restriction when it comes to 'Wrath of Magic', so why further cripple mages at low levels with a restrictive 'Wrath of the Bear'.
Selected weapon and critical strike/shot are enough filtering. Not like mages are going to be switching to their melee or ranged weapon regularly and wait for the WotB spell to be cast.
Since to qualify for multi-class it is a sure bet that mages are going to learn ranged skills; and just because there forced into melee weapon typing there going to learn a little something along the way about how to use that melee weapon.

How much effort do you think it would take to replace "unique" with "exceptional" in DS2? I think it would be a very neat feature.

let me try exercising my ds2 modding grey matter albeit dusty in the theory behind string replacement in ds2.

replace screen or display related instances of "unique" with "exceptional" in components.gas as well as the ui directory files? that way, on the backend its still "unique" but on the frontend its simply displayed as "exceptional".

changing "unique" on the backend is not recommended as it might mess up unique drops (including the item loot drop files) and all the unique item templates (the [common] block which contains rarity=unique) and u end up having to modify them as well (more work!).

to test, just make a unique item drop and make sure the item label on the ground sez "exceptional item" e.g. "exceptional boots".

however, i think there might be some word related redundancies and confusion since the term "exceptional" is already being used to describe an upgraded version of some normal items (e.g. exceptional elven armor). therefore, players might not be able to differentiate exceptional normal items from the "exceptional" (unique) items aside from the color used. ("unique" items use a purple color)

personally, i recommend working the grey matter more to come up with a better adjective for the top end items to avoid confusion with the exceptional normal items. dont just blindly copy the "exceptional" adjective from diablo 3 or from some other video games just because it sounds good.

i must remind u that biddle said there could be potential legal issues that could arise with mods if u copied stuff from other video games and put them into your ds mod(s). just saying...

EDIT (added some suggestions): my personal suggestions are to use the adjectives "epic", "special" or "fabled" as possible candidates for a new term for unique items.

btw another thing to note about reagent recipes is that u can still use them even if u dont have the recipe in your journal. i have copied all the reagent recipes from the gas files and printed them out so i can refer to them when i need certain items, so i personally dont care about reagent recipes dropping multiple times. :mrgreen:

@iryan
I must agree with lady femme since terms like good, exceptional, and legendary are already used for standard albeit upgraded versions of regular items. Therefore it would be very confusing to most players to have the term used for two different things. May I suggest unequaled, unparalleled or prodigious. You might also like to look in a good thesaurus for synonyms of Unique or Exceptional.

However 'unique' probably should not taken too literally. So unique is not the appearance of these items, unique is the (chance for an) extraodinary quality level these items may have.

@whomisold: Feel free to cast 'Wrath of Bear' manually on the party members, this still works. The auto-cast AI however only will do this if a melee or ranged weapon is selected and if the chance for critical hits is about 10%.