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I left here abruptly, with work I'd volunteered for standing unfinished, and for that, I'm sorry. I want to apologize mainly to Iryan for having agreed to work on his mod before I vanished. Please forgive me.

I moved shortly after I started helping on ds2 Yesterhaven, and my priorities moved in turn, so that it is only now that I can make my way back to dungeon siege and modding the hell out of it.

I no longer have DS2 installed, and I doubt I will be working with it at all going forward. I found that modding DS1/LOA is more my flavor, and that there is still a ton of untapped potential in that old gem.

I've had DS installed for about 2 weeks now, and finally began modding items and monsters for it last week. I've aped a dexterity staff template, added it to pcontent/Elddim, and I've broken the balance of Ehb completely a couple times now by editing formulas.gas. I changed the base templates for Krug, Skrubb, and Krug Dog, as well as made a few tweaks in templates.gas/actor_evil. I untanked all the mods I could find and compared them to their vanilla counterparts, and I'm constantly cross referencing how things were done with what I'm trying to do. Seriously more fun than just playing ever was.

My latest playthrough, up until I started modding, was in LoU. Not having played through the Utrae map before (not even once!), I don't know what all is different, but I quickly started examining how battles took place, and what I, as Player, was being asked to accomplish in order to not die. This line of inquiry led me to drop all the new party members in favor of my hero and some mules. I've played through both Ehb and Arrana as a single member party, and it is the best way to play, in my opinion, even if the AI can be duped and mobs taken apart at leisure.

I found out something tho, something that has me eager to mod DS1 again. I found out that I am a master of the vanilla campaign modes. Hard, is just not hard enough, and I've never leveled a char to play through vet/elite/etc, so I'm not sure if that's what I'm missing; how Elite Ehb feels as a game...

I just know for sure that I'm better at this game than this game is at challenging me. I have to do something to change that, and I'm not satisfied with the mods I've found which attempt to re-balance the combat.

My current project palette is something on the order of eXpertAIv06 or the AI changes in Adepts. I will attempt to balance combat in favor of a single character party playthrough of The Kingdom Of Ehb.

Currently, a single character can get all the way through Ehb on Hard Difficulty by drawing single enemies away from groups or danger zones with Explosive Powder. Another tactic I rely heavily on is running after drawing aggro on a group until they stop chasing and are spread out for easy pickings. I Have completed Ehb at least 2 full times this way as just me. The experience slows the game down a ton, while making some very boring tactics too common and mostly still Over Powered. The challenge is in being aware of mob locations and running enough.... been there.

What I love about a single char play of Ehb is that spells matter. Buffs and debuffs, as well as leveling all your skills and attributes, are vital to surviving those encounters that you are forced (or that you decide) to just bully through. I spent time at every Mana Shrine in Ehb, casting buffs on my character, and I had a donkey laden with mana potions to rebuff between shrines if needed. I had specific items for when I was casting Nature or Combat spells that I changed into, sometimes in the middle of battle.

I also love that Death matters, and quick save is my second most frequently pressed key, right after pause.

What I really want is a fresh perspective on my favorite game. I want the systems that govern the game and grant abilities to the player (like pause to give orders) to mean something in every fight. I want gear that changes my options and tactics. I want to speed up the single char playthrough, while making it more challenging than vanilla. I want enemies that don't let me get away with cheap tricks, and are generally more unpredictable.

My last attempt at these goals rendered a mixed result. I changed the difficulty damage modifier in formulas.gas, making go's hit much harder:

// Difficulty level multipliers - damage done from attackers perspective
	difficulty_easy_player	 	=	1.25;
	difficulty_easy_computer  	=	1.93;

	difficulty_medium_player	=	5.05;
	difficulty_medium_computer	=	6.15;

	difficulty_hard_player	 	=	13.42;
	difficulty_hard_computer 	=	12.15;

This set of values is the 3rd attempt. Constant since I started, Hero Life and Mana regen is doubled, armor_scalar is 0.33 (every ~3 points of defense blocks 1 dmg), and chance to hit for all go's is increased slightly (cuz whiff!):

// Variables related to determining whether or not one go was successful in
	// landing a hit on a defending go
	hit_chance		=	70.0;
	attacker_diff_scalar	=	2.3;
	victim_diff_scalar	=	1.5;
	attacker_hit_cap	=	95.0;
	defender_hit_cap	=	5.0;

	// Death threshold is used to determine how far below zero character life can
	// go before the character goes from being unconscious to dead
	death_threshold		=	1.0;

	// Radius of sphere check for when a character is unconscious and has healed
	// through natural recovery - if there is an enemy within this sphere then
	// the character will continue to lie on the ground until threat is gone
	enemy_near_sphere	=	4.0;

	// Minimum amount of time that a character will stay unconscious regardless of
	// how close to zero the character is when he went unconscious
	min_unconscious_duration=	3.0;

	// Armor scalar is used for tuning amount of damage that is done with regard
	// to the amount of armor the victim has
	armor_scalar = 0.33

The result of these changes, as well as AI changes to most mobs from the Farmhouse to the Crypt, was a damn enjoyable, tense, and more player skill oriented playthrough, all the way to the first trapped box in the Crypt, which one-shot killed me. I avoided traps up until then, but this box was a chest type and the arrow in it did massive damage.

My thought is that, of course, the damage modifier is excessive. I plan to look at trap templates to see if I can reduce their base damage to a survivable level. I plan to consider scrapping most of my changes to formulas.gas and instead, edit the life total and damage output of each evil go and trap. This presents the problem of damage based in spells that mobs use, and having to edit those too. Each mob will be revised, so damage/health/defense/AI can be edited or at least noted simultaneously.

I could use some help, mainly in basic mod best practices and useful reference material. I haven't opened or tried to use DSLOAMod.exe, mainly out of sheer ignorance, and partly because I'm still fiddling with templates.gas and formulas.gas, which I'm assuming require a restart to test. I'm likely wrong, but so far a custom shortcut res_path and restarting from scratch between edits has been my way.

The mod I intend to create will hopefully change the way Dungeon Siege is played, and add some new life to the campaign that started it all. If you have questions/comments/suggestions, please comment here, and thank you for reading this if you did.... here's a cookie!

:spider:
not a cookie, sry