Hotfix Mod / Aranna Legacy Mod

Sting: I'm still processing your feedback - there really is some meat on that bone...!
However I rather like to spend the time for new tunings than to explain old things that will change soon anyway.

Just two specific aspects perhaps:

Sometimes it may look a bit strange how newly introduced strings/words/despriptions by this mod look the screen.
For example, it never was intended that spells have requirments for nature magic and combat magic at the same time, making it necessary to describe or realize it in any other way - let's say the power or duration for your nature magic spell is almost zero if you have no combat magic at all.
Another important part is 'auto-translation'. This mod is not in english, this mod should adopt any installed (lating-type/-order looking) game language.
For example, the conversation with Drovan is a patch-work of existing conversation pieces that (each) will be translated by default.

Honestily, considering it after almost 10 years since the 'game_speed' option exists, a maximum of +200% seems to be bit arbitray and careless.
So perhaps I will reduce it, perhaps I just will add a note. But neither your hardware can't be boosted nor the chronical technical lack of this inofficial option both can't be fixed from my side, you will go on facing a remarkably increased chance for strange errors, the higher this option value is.

I guess it's also possible to use Cheat Engine to speedhack the game, instead of using "game_speed" option. Although I haven't tried that myself in DS2.

About that speed, is possible increase speed of companions? I use party speed, not game speed in my opinion it´s better, because they speed up only party and not the whole game.
And about other game mechanic, is possible to add spell Rendering aura: Arrow bane + mark of rending or ather mark spell?
Because it would be a great idea using arrow bane spell for shooting more arrows and mark of rendering spell for marking more enemies than one, in one shot, and then usingg execute power.

Assumed now someone would only increase the moving speed for his party (without sacrificing something in exchange) the game would become more unbalanced - the faster you move, the lower the chance that monsters can incept the party.

It's a bit tricky to estimate what impact this really would have, how challenging the game still would be. Most don't play DS2 to run away from monsters though, but by trend it could become some kind of invulnerability when party members never can get hit because of their moving speed.
Remind maybe, already now many monsters in DS2 are really inert, moving significantly slower and suffering an attack interval that takes ~2x longer compared to party members.

Technically there is a little handicap possible here too - the faster you move ahead, the faster terrain pieces/nodes must be loaded/unloaded, which can result in a FPS drop.

Happy new year from my side too!
Nonetheless, my X-Mas holidays are over now, and for the new mod release I have tried to fix or tune as many things as possible:
 

Updates:
• Fix for 'Kalrathia Rebellion' quest where in the recent mod release the conversation with the Lord didn't continue at some quest states.
• The collective bonus form set items was not applied after being resurrected or sometimes when leaving the inn. This is fixed now - special thanks to Sting pointing on this bug that remained unfixed for so many years, until now.
• A lack in a revised reach/range check caused monsters not to jump out of holes or trenches. They are jumping again.
• The expanded character information (on the resistance window) will show now the bonus for all races.
• Safer fix for/against the 'forgotten' 10% magic find bonus on human males/females (another old bug impairing the game since release...).
• Higher check range for nearby enemies before starting a party banter/conversation.
• Several (humanoid) NPCs you may fight against rebalanced.
• Minor lack fixed in a formula responsible for resistances and immunities.
• Bestiary book expanded with forgotten Ganth (act 3), Bone Minion (all acts) and Scrub Boar pet too. There is now also a hint where these monsters/pets normally exist.
• Monsters resistant against 'Corpse Transmutation' also may resist now from being affected of any kind of remote mind/body control.
• Messages for special loot drops will indicate now the type of item too.
• Several class-crossing Rending Aura buff spells slightly rebalanced.
• Melee items with a 'Vampirism' bonus (quite rare and melee untypical) actually profit now from the 'Vampirism' skill too.
• Fix for damage irregularity on 'Lesser Grave Beam' spell.
• Inhibition chance fixed for 'Summon Ghost' spell.
• v2.2 only: 'Nightstalker Arbalest' lost its bonuses in the recent mod release, this is fixed again.
• Viperclaw gives now a higher death damage bonus in veteran and elite mode.
• Missing textures/icons for reagents added.
• In Kalrathia broken/missing plant models replaced/added.
• For single player mode: The increased maximum for your party size will now also be respected in veteran and elite mode. To become effective with older savegames you have to revisit the mercenary mode at least once (just enter the map, save and exit again).
• Sometimes in elite mode an item from mercenary mode dropped although an own for elite mode intended item existed - this is fixed now.
• Ini-option 'buff_effect_duration' now also works with incantations.
• The maximum value for the 'game_speed' option is 150 now, still be careful and care about manual/additional buckups of your savegames since already at normal speed time-critical may happen sometimes.
• Possible work-around added against inventory lock-ups. You will see a corresponding message when it gets active - please keep me informed.

 
Note: If previously downloaded, please don't forget to remove the 'Mod-Hotfix-Beta5i-Fix.ds2res'
resp. the 'Mod-BrokenWorld-ArannaLegacy-Alpha3u-Fix.ds2res' file - it's no longer required.

Thank you so much for your new patch! This is amazing work and I LOVE it!

Is it possible to increase the size of the always-visible minimap? Or a general UI scale option... let's just say the UI wasn't at all designed for 2560x1440...

It should have its own gas file to describe all the UI elements and where they come from. You should be able to clone and scale the bitmaps to produce larger versions that you can then point to. However, I don't know if it would be possible to re-scale the content. You might just get a larger porthole to look down through.

A larger viewport is exactly what I want. What tool is needed to browse DS2 resource files?

Tankviewer2 at least, there is a tools section in the Downloads.

gas files are just text. Open them with any text editor. That's assuming you've untanked them, which you need to do for any changes.

recently i just playing this game once again... now on version alpha 3v
seriously,, i completely forgot about this game , and feel like playing for the first time..

after died once , i exit the game , LOL

what i notice :
seems like theres a bug on special power animation .. i forgot the name..
it was the first special power on combat spell skill tree..
that spit energy orb from char - head , now it just spit fire ball effect..
was that intentional ??

and theres this mini-boss that very hard to kill and hit like a truck, need 2 hit to kill me,
it's near the entrance when you just leave the prison, that can summon dinosaurs-like monster, after passing guard that tell the password is "chaba"

what i miss??
i just installed DS2 + expansion on the same directory ..
and put Aranna Legacy Mod, Alpha 3v + RING removal mod in resource folder
no other mod / what so ever ..

does this mod really worth it for casual player ??,
seems like un-modded DS:BW far easier on normal
i look in the read ME file, theres a zillion bug fix tho..

Hello, I've snatched Aranna Legacy as soon as I saw it and already played a few hours. I'm full of questions and I hope there are patient people here who can help out a little. Before reading this, know that I have absolute zero knowledge about DS2 modding, all I know for now is how to change the options in the .INI file following the guide posted here somewhere.

1. What's up with the new experience-splitting spells - what are the exp ratios? Which class is then "main" and which "secondary"? Can a character be effective with it considering there are no special skills for them?
2. Is it possible to tone down the difficulty even lower that 50? I found the recommended one outrageously hard for my singleton (1 char party) and the 50 one mildly insane...
3. Can I revert the potion drinking to vanilla? The drinking animation looks nice and all, but is effectively stunning the character for the couple seconds duration, making it obsolete to use in middle of combat, and since my character is a Nature Mage I can heal out of combat just fine.
4. One of the things that make it much harder to play than vanilla is the removal of attack animation-canceling; Or to be exact, every spell has this casting time and makes it so that even if I cancel the animation itself (by a move order) the animation time still needs to pass before using the spell again. Yes it makes Quickened Casting skill a better investment, but I really don't like it and would appreciate some info on if and how this can be reverted.
5. Is it possible to increase the skill gain per level higher than +2? I have used a small mod so far which gave the characters +4 skill points so far and it made the skill allocation overthinking process much shorter I'm aware cross-classing gives +1 bonus every 7 or so levels but still..

THat's all for now, I love the new features I've seen so far, most notably the rebalanced reagents (which I wouldn't mind if they'd get buffed even more haha), different/rebalanced items, spells etc etc; Makes for a whole new experience!
Huge thanks to the modder btw, this probably took some time

1. Dragoon (melee + combat magic):
   • permanent 5 seconds stun, that can stunlock all enemies except bosses
   • very high dodge bonus at high levels
2. Magician (combat + nature magics):
   • magic damage bonus
   • ghost summon that can posess all enemies except bosses

I find your observations and questions interesting. I also play solo (Shield/Normal Speed Weapon Build) and found the 100 value difficulty setting very challenging. Especially "Normal" seems to be more difficult than Veteran (haven't reached Elite yet). If it's already challenging with a Melee Character focusing on Armor rating (reinforced armor, fortitude and shield skill focus) and health, I can;t begin to imagine how hard it will be when I play as a mage, especially without the spell action cancellation.
Right now, my char is lvl 75 and I am almost finished with the BW campaign on Veteran. There have been 2 times when I had to tone down the difficulty setting to 50: Fighting the Surgeons on both occasions. The main reason for this is their healing rate; I just can't kill their summoned crawlers fast enough to keep them from healing themselves. This was already very hard on Normal, where I only was able to kill them using 2 summoned Knights(using weird summoning Runes), with the difficulty setting on 100.
Also, there have been 2 occasions where I had to use the +drlife cheat code when fighting mage Boden and Lord Kalrathia's advisor (Kanos or something?). I did this because I did not know you can change the difficulty setting in the INI file and those two were just ridicilous to fight. Boden did not heal himself but his damage output, armor and life were through the roof, plus he summons creatures. The advisor was alright in terms of health and armor, but he heals himself and his skull spray could kill in 2 or 3 bursts. I might have been able to defeat them without the cheat code on difficulty 50, but who knows.

By the way, I really like the inclusion of new Unique Items (Purple ones), I had a Spiked mace called "Frostbite" or something like that but I accidentally sold it. Does anyone know the stats of that weapon? It's a low level weapon, requires around melee lvl 17

not long used Aranna Legacy Mod, Alpha 3v mod and all working well till i get to the Missing Squadron quest in Act 1. picked the first guy up and by the time i got to hand him in he wasnt with me anymore, think he might of died or somthing by the mimic. i went all the way back and cant find him even though on the quest it said i had him. so i did the other 2 guys you have to save and on the quest it said i had all 3 and go talk to who ever that dude is to hand it in but he keeps telling me to find his men. getting a little stressed as i cant find a way of sorting it. can someone help

@jasonblow: Thanks for your feedback - and I've just rechecked it, there is really something wrong - it seems the soldiers may not get always the (technical) protection they should get.
It will take some time to analyze the reasons why - the strange thing is on Utrae DS2 it's used too and there it works fine...

I'm sorry, but right now you have to skip this secondary quest for the time being. If possible, try to activate one of your older (backup) savegames (but first move them all to a own/custom folder, incl. the existing backups there).

--- Edit:
There actually was a strange error within the folder structure of this mod, it made tunings on NPCs ineffective sometimes. So there's a new release of this mod (download links on top).

I will down load the new version Alpha 3W. Thank You jasonblow as I thought the problem was something caused by a mod conflict between Aranna Legacy and one of my mods. Thank you for finding the problem so rapidly KillerGremal.

So it took a while until I realized that the NPC I'm talking with is underneath not completely the one as expected, moreover all modified flicks/conversation were working fine.
Due to the lack this quest NPC was no longer resistant to damage and the intended components to protect him (means: consciousnessless is OK but dying not) did not get effective.

After realizing this finally, the work-around was quite simple - I just moved some files into a new folder. :o

 
However send me a PM if someone has had similar NPC problems leaving a quest unfinished. I will try to find then a specific work-around.

First off, I love your mod. I'm using it in conjunction with Legendary Mod and filming it on Twitch.

I don't mind the auto level of monsters to make them more tough, but there is an issue where once in awhile, the monsters will level up so high, I can't fight them. The last stream I did, my part was level 11/12, and I faced a monster that was 37. This was in the Wesrin Cross. I do find if I log out and log back in, the problem is resolved, but that is bothersome, especially when dealing with OBS.

If you're still doing work on this, I'm hoping you can resolve this issue.

Again, thank you for a wonderful mod. I feel like I am showing a unique DS experience on Twitch.

If you care to see the video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/153561320

On the side of the (summoned) stash/tresor there is a button to deactivate the LevelAdjusting mod (or switch it into another mode). The stash itself is quite big enough, however accientially you also may hit that button (there will be an 'unusual' sound when pressed the stash itself doesn't do).

So this could be one reason why suddenly monsters have a unpleasant levels on the DS1/DS2 maps. Perhaps I should rethink once about an option to hide this button on the summoned stash...

 
If this is no valid explanation, the monster's exact name would help a lot to examine it a bit more specificly, since there are quite alot options to configure the behaviour of the LevelAdjustment mod.

I'm encountering a bug when I buy large health potions using Aranna Legacy 3w. When I drop a large health or mana potion from the shop into my inventory, the health or mana contained in the potion drops to 30. Buying a large rejuvenation potion gets me a potion with 30 health and 500 mana.

So far, I have tried buying large potions from Lyssanore in Aman'Lu. I'm not far enough into the game to have any other merchants who sell large potions, so I don't know if the same behavior would occur with other merchants. I removed the mod and tried buying the potions again and I got potions with correct capacities, so it seems the problem is in Aranna Legacy.

@eruanion: I had to examine this. So far I didn't experience anything myself (although, hadn't time to play much either), however also during the last >2 months nothing similar has been reported... :o

Should you have other mods installed, do once a counter-check if you like. Leave the Aranna Legacy mod installed and (try to) remove all other mods - incompatibility issues between mods are sadly nothing uncommon in DS2.

@KillerGremal Thanks for your response. I removed the 3 other mods I had installed (a mod to increase the storage vault capacity, one to increase text size and one to increase carry capacity of pets). I also reverted any changes I had made to the ini file. (I am using Elys Succubus Manager for the All Saves and camera unlock functions, but I have not been using the Succubus modlet.) But I still experienced the problem with the large potions.

The first large potion I buy looks like a normal, full potion, but mousing over the potion shows a capacity of 30 health or mana. When I buy another large potion, the graphic of the first potion changes to that of a near-empty potion. And that new potion (and any subsequent large potions I buy) end up being 30 capacity potions.

At least potions dropped from monsters/containers act normally. I'll update when I reach another merchant that sells large potions and find out whether the same thing happens.

Hey! It's been awhile! I love the updates!
I found a little glitch where the Druid Staff would render as an undefined object (yellow and black). I posted about it here https://www.siegetheday.org/?q=node/1607#comment-49141

I was thinking it was something to do with Steam, but then I found out that once I turned off Aranna Legacy the Druid Staff was looking normal again. I'm only using this mod with the Legendary Mod too so I don't think it could be a mod conflict. I also tested this glitch in the regular DS2 campaign to confirm that it's persistent.

I'm not entirely sure what the issue is, but I'm having a problem that seems to be related to characters that have autocast (like healing). They'll randomly just stop attacking, even when they can't cast anything (out of mana or no targets in need of it), and occasionally just start running in place and get stuck there. Switching modes (Rampage, Mirror, etc.) kicks them out of it temporarily, but usually they'll just go right back to standing around not doing anything, even if they're being actively attacked. A lot of the early game fights I'm having to get most of the kills with my active character alone (which is especially hard since that's probably the most difficult part of the modded game).
I'm playing 2.3 with the Legacy mod 3w, which I just recently upgraded to (I had been using 3u -- never used 3v because I hadn't come to the site in a while to see there was an upgrade), and the only other mod I have installed is an expanded Storage chest mod, which has never caused any issues that weren't listed in the notes. I do also have the line autocast_slots = 6 in my ini file. Other than that, nothing else is altered.

Thank you both for your feedbacks. I will look at it as soon as possible, unfortunately my old gaming PC (the one with all the DS2 modding) crashed (due to the summer heat I guess, CPU or power supply 'only') and it may take a while to fix this, anyhow...

 
@matrixphijr: Well, sadly there never was much AI behind auto-casting spells in DS2. (e.g.: Magic Steal on a melee attacker). Some matters have been fixed though, but choosing automatically the best spell to cast out of six is still an optimization problem...

Possibly the whole part should be rewritten, away from serially processing auto-casting chances to an approach expecting from the beginning that there may be (much) more than only 2 spells (the original max. for auto-casting spells) to consider.

 
@DrakeIsGod: Nice catch, indeed there were some tunings for staves. Strange non the less than it has not texture, as far as I remember it only should look like a long wodden stick, not needing any explicit texture definition beyond the model default.

Also, sorry about your PC. Hope it works for you again soon

Looking at the picture (other thread) where the staff is black-and-yellow - wrong icon? Isn't a genuine Bent Druid Staff a crude stick with swollen head?