Arcanum Rebalance Pack v1.1

[Helton]

Wear two get one free.

edit: And actually it isn't that good of a point since you can give charged rings to your party members and the points you spend towards charged ring have other benefits so you cannot look at it as a one-to-one xp point comparison with agility.

It has benefits only for your followers. It is a useless skill this way if you play solo.

You have to take the charged ring skill to progress along the electricity branch. Thus, it has other benefits by allowing you access to all those other schematics, electrical mastery points for discovered schematics, and tech points on the magic-tech scale.

Are there any other rings in the game worth wearing for a tech character?

 

[Double Ogre]

Combat balance is the only thing that needs to be fixed in a whole balance for it to be fine. XP gain system in particular, among spells/weapon damage.

Well, I can change/remove the XP per hit system. But the game is still full of exploits, so we would have to spend a lot of time looking at spreadsheets to carefully balance everything. I suppose, the speed of many weapons should be toned down, while the damage should be increased, to make low DX characters more viable. I would also cap the speed stat at 25 (it would only affect TB, as RT animation speed is already capped at 25). Also, the Backstab skill should be nerfed a bit, etc.

I was toying with the idea of a rebalance patch myself for quite some time, but in the end, I'm not sure. While it's technically possible (I can alter behavior of most hardcoded features), it's still a lot of work. Moreover, everybody has their own idea of rebalancing, so we would never agree.

 

[MetalCraze]

True. And then you remember that you also need to rebalance how you gain XP with your party members - because basically if you want to have a well pumped up character you will have to work alone (especially when you have a party member that deals more damage than you thus getting more XP even if you twitch mouse buttons hard enough too). I would've preferred a good ol' XP per kill system that spreads XP points between your party members when you kill an enemy thus while not making it ideal - making it much more fair. But that will basically mean redoing a whole balance from scratch.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I wonder .. has there ever been a fix for there Molotov cocktail?

 

[bhlaab]

I was toying with the idea of a rebalance patch myself for quite some time, but in the end, I'm not sure. While it's technically possible (I can alter behavior of most hardcoded features), it's still a lot of work. Moreover, everybody has their own idea of rebalancing, so we would never agree.

Do it! I have no problems with you doing a lot of work for my benefit.

 

[ARZ]

I wonder .. has there ever been a fix for there Molotov cocktail?

Why? What is wrong with it?

 

[Jim Cojones]

I wonder .. has there ever been a fix for there Molotov cocktail?

Why? What is wrong with it?

Throwing it (or any grenade) doesn't cost you any AP and you can throw it under your feet without hurting yourself.

 

[ARZ]

I wonder .. has there ever been a fix for there Molotov cocktail?

Why? What is wrong with it?

Throwing it (or any grenade) doesn't cost you any AP and you can throw it under your feet without hurting yourself.

AP cost for grenades was fixed in the unofficial patch.

 

[Burning Bridges]

AP cost for grenades was fixed in the unofficial patch.

Drogs unofficial patch.

[Version 081004]

[R] Fixed a bug with APs subtraction. Throwing an item (including grenades) now takes 4 APs.

lol my savegames were made with the version just before that.

 

[Serus]

Thank you.

At least someone who had the same ideas as i but is not a LAZY bastard as i am. I don't care whou you are, i only heard you mentioned many times and see the tag but i can't think of anything special you did to deserve it (obviously i read the forum too rarely) - contrary to the tag of Volo or few other people. Keep the good work, i will submit a few ideas of my own later if you wish.

About Dex rings - why not a middle solution, +1 Dex AND something else instead of +2 Dex ?

PS Don't let anyone discourage you in you quest, good karma will change the perception of you the people here have.



Edit: i "installed it" and i dont see any changes, it doesnt show in old saves (balanced sword is still speed 18) ? I don't know much about Arcanum modding.

 

[ARZ]

Don't let anyone discourage you

Not a chance, my friend.

Edit: i "installed it" and i dont see any changes, it doesnt show in old saves (balanced sword is still speed 18) ? I don't know much about Arcanum modding.

Prototype changes (as is done with the Balanced Sword) will not appear in older saves.

 

[Serus]

Ok it works.
Do you intend to work more on this mod ? I now learnt how to hex edit arcanum proto files - i could help a little. I think the game BADLY need a major rebalance mod to make the combat in game at leas somewhat challenging and fun.
For exemple all ranged weapons should have on average double damage but ~50% speed imo. Speed reduced as in actual number of action points to use a weapon doubled. Most melee weapns need slowing down. Speed of characters should be reduced/capped. Now you can achieve ridiculus amount of speed points: high dex + fast weapon and number of arracks per round becomes absurd.
What do you think ?

 

[Serus]

After a few hours of play i have to things to report.
1. Balanced sword is very well balanced from gameplay perspective now. There are still a few early swords with insane 15 speed. A rapier with 15 sp can be bought before the game starts ! Katana is available in Tarant. Make those two 12 speed, balanced sword will be better because of higher damage which is good.
2. You overdone the dog - now it is impossible to make him join -he has to few hp and always dies before you arrive to save him. I tried to arrive in Ashbury via train and by foot and run as fast as possible - no chance. The dog should be weakened - he was a killing machine in vanilla but he should be joinable. Add some hp or weaken the gnome who is killing him imo.

 

[ARZ]

2. You overdone the dog - now it is impossible to make him join -he has to few hp and always dies before you arrive to save him. I tried to arrive in Ashbury via train and by foot and run as fast as possible - no chance. The dog should be weakened - he was a killing machine in vanilla but he should be joinable. Add some hp or weaken the gnome who is killing him imo.

Crap...must be something in his new leveling scheme. At the moment I'm setting up a site, when I'm done I'll look into it. And yep, I noticed the high speed on the Rapier and Short Swords, but they have a much lower damage than the Balanced Sword. I'll try them out and see if they are unbalanced and act on it if they are.

As for collaboration, I don't know how viable it is, considering the small work-load of the project - but if you have any ideas or protos you want to pitch for the project - feel free. Any work supplied by you will be mentioned in the read-me, of course.

 

[Serus]

A few more things that you should consider unbalanced:

1. Scroll of sense invisible/traps = can be sold for ridiculous amounts of meoney. One can be sold for over 1200 gold, in Black Mountain Mines you can find ~10. 10x1200 = 12000 gold from one location. It makes you rich. As a technologist you can use a spectometer, as a thief spot trap skill and sell all the scrolls. Anyway they souldn't be deleted just made 10 times less valuable IMHO.

2. Potion of intelect. Increase your int by 10 (or to 18 im not sure) - is very cheap and makes possible learning all tech levels without increasing int at all. It's absurd imo. Making it 5x more costly and change its effect, temporary +2 or 3 INT is enough - you still will be able to learn levels you sohudnt be able to.

3. Dex rings. As you said - a little overpowered. My suggestion: +1 Dex and +2 Armor Class sounds much better.

4. I still think rapier and katana is too fast, change from 15 to 12. Katana will remain a usefull item - almost as stron as new balanced sword but you dont need Magnus or be a technologist. Rapier is available before the game starts and is cheap - it makes it an overpowered early weapn. Remember that an apprentice in melee adds +5 speed to the weapon making a 15 speed --> 20 --> 2 Action points to use. 3AP is much more balanced IMHO again.



A question: i know how to edit protos and how to extract game files form .dat archives - but how to make a patch you did ?

 

[Menacer]

I searched google, and tried all the links. Does anybody have a current link for this file?

Thanks
Menacer